The Remnants Of Us
by The Broken Watchman
Summary: When the world of Remnant falls to the same virus that destroys earth in "The Last Of Us", hunters are forced to become the hunted. Those who were once innocent children have become cold killers. They all had to give up something to survive... but can some things be gotten back? Or are they simply lost forever? Rated T for language, violence, and suggestive themes.
1. A Rotting World

**_This will also be on chapter 10, but if you have the time I would strongly suggest starting from the beginning again with this story. If you haven't read the new description yet, you'll see I had a pretty big change of heart. You don't have to though, I haven't changed much content. I just made the story better, I've become a better writer since I wrote the beginning of this story a few months ago. Each story went up about five hundred to a thousand words, just adding extra flair and side thoughts. But the tone does shift slightly. If you reread this, you'll see that I'm not changing the theme of the story. It's going to be just as dark as it's always been. But after listening to a friend, I've come to realize that there should be some light at the end to work towards._**

* * *

_Where do I begin? I haven't found clean paper to write out my thoughts on in months. And I hate writing in pen, I know the paper is going to look like a huge mess when I finish. But it was all I was able to find in this storeroom, along with some rusted push pins and a few stamps. I guess if I ever leave this for someone to read, I should start at the beginning. I guess a name would be a good idea right? Mine is Weiss Schnee. It doesn't matter if you recognize it or not, last names mean nothing now. I'm only a remnant of what the world once was anyway. I guess if you're reading this, and you want to say something too, you could sign your name at the bottom after mine._

_I don't know how you wouldn't know, but just in case… I should explain how all this began._

_When our world began to crumble, we didn't even see the first cracks forming. It came on so fast, the sickness that we all should have feared. But we weren't worried; how could it hurt us? We made it ourselves. As hunters slowly became unable to handle the Grimm menace, we turned to our scientists for an answer. We created a virus, born from an ant hunting fungus we had found in the western jungles, to kill off all the world's Grimms. We wanted to make ourselves safe from the threat that we were beginning to lose control over. When we saw nevermore falling from the sky, and beowolf packs lying dead in the forests, we celebrated for days on end! I was no better, and I cheered along with them all too, uncaring that I was going to be put out of my career. On a total fluke we had wiped out the sole risk to our existence since the day we first rose from dust ourselves. What we chose to do was a mistake. I think we all understand now that it is better to live with risk of a forest fire than to destroy every forest. We shouldn't have chosen to destroy every forest._

_It didn't take long, after we destroyed the Grimms. In the north, very close to where my family lived by coincidence, reports of some new strain of the Grimm hunting disease was reported to be infecting the locals. We swiftly tried to eradicate the disease, although not to the extent we should have. At first the strain was just labeled as some viral infection similar HIV or the H1N1 disease. It made life difficult for those who were infected, as they always felt angry and distressed, living in a foggy world where they didn't know who or what to rage against. Sometimes a person was only irrational, and sometimes a person was a… danger, both to themselves and to others. It wasn't treatable, at least we never found out if it was in the beginning, but we thought it was livable, manageable. So we quarantined and observed the infected. If we had known better, we would have put a bullet in every infected's head, and burned the very ground where the disease began. Because unfortunately all this area served as was a petri dish for something far worse to grow out of._

_The first true dead body was found somewhere near Balvian academy in the northern country of Atlas, a rival to my own school. At least, those are the rumors I've heard; information only travels by word of mouth now, and I've heard so many rumors that sometimes I just don't know what to believe. I do know the disease spread rampantly across all of Remnant, as spores were carried on the summer winds across the oceans to every one of the continents. Some people only needed to inhale a single spore, and it was all over for them. They would go insane, with rage and blood lust. On Ruby's twentieth birthday our celebrating was cut short when we hunters and huntresses were called in to stop the riots that were spreading uncontrollably across Atlas. All that did was get us infected as well. A body should drop from a blade or a bullet to the heart, but our enemies kept coming, rising off the ground when they should have been left immobile._

_I lost one of my best friends, who I had come to think of as a sister, in those riots. We weren't even able to get her body back from the monsters. Before we were able to stop them she had been torn into so many pieces. A finger here, a leg there, and chunks of hair ripped off and strewn here and there in every other direction._

_That came out wrong. It was devastating to watch, and I was glad that Ruby didn't see it. She had been around the corner helping other's evacuate the quarantine zone as the infected swarmed the scene._

_After that the three of us retreated, and advised our comrades to do the same. We didn't wait for an order. If anyone had noticed our absence, we would have been expelled from what was left of the hunter organization for treason. We didn't care. As we returned to Vale the three of us cried over our fallen sister, and we called out curses on Ozpin, Ironwood and the like, damning the leaders who had sent us in unprepared and ill-informed._

_We returned to our home country just as the lights when out. It's amazing how little we valued things such as heating and electricity. And I'll admit it freely, as a spoiled brat for the majority of my life, I didn't take the changes well. I'm sure there were plenty of times when my two friends wanted to slap some sense into me, make me to understand that the lights just weren't coming back on. I held onto that hope for far too long, and I waited for close to a month before I had to understand that we weren't coming back from this. The world hadn't been crippled this badly even during the great war._

_Very little information spread at that point, but one thing we did notice on our own was that the virus somehow damped magical power. As we fought, we noticed how we no longer felt the strength of the world pulsing through our veins. I personally think it was because Grimms were creatures of magic themselves. The fungus first targeted the energy rich bodies of the black monsters, leaching off of their life force to survive. When it lost that energy source, it migrated to the only other creatures that could channel the world's energy… humans, and their faunas cousins. But that part can only ever be our speculation. I just know that I found out that fact too late. I wasted my stores of energy before the world even fell apart, and lost the ability to make glyphs. I'm just as weak as any other human now. Ruby and Yang were smarter than I was, and preserved the energy in their bodies for their semblances, hoping they would one day save us if we were ever in a pinch._

_From there, the world fell into chaos, as martial law began to win out over governments who could no longer control the hordes of dead bodies that had once been their citizens. No one knew what to do, and as the spread of information died, so did hope. The world was ending; many of us thought it was the beginning of some kind of rapture, as the dead rose to consume the living. I was never religious, but even I sometimes wondered if this was some form of divine punishment. We probably deserved it._

_And the hunters and huntresses, we who were supposed to protect and sacrifice for the good of the people, who were supposed to be the beacons of light when the world fell into darkness... we chose the selfish option. We all saw firsthand how out-classed we were by our new enemies, our old friends and neighbors. We ran, hiding from the world as it began to rot. One out of every ten hunters survived the mania, while it was close to one in ten thousand for civilians. __You can hate me and the organization I belonged to for letting the world die, because all of this probably is our fault. If we had stayed and fought, maybe science would have found an answer before everything fell apart. _

_Left with no one else in the world to look to or rely on Ruby, Yang, and I just began to roam aimlessly. We supported each other. We actually did well, those first two years. We didn't live well though. We stole, we swindled, we bullied. The monsters we once defended people against… that was what we became. More names that probably mean nothing to you, but after all we did, Cinder and Roman were saints compared to us._

_That was what it took to survive though. We were all harder people than we once were; we needed to be in order to continue on. But we were all the same too. I was still shrewd, Yang was still boisterous, Ruby was still kind. At least until we lost another._

_I blame her for it. We had been hiding out in this small no name city, in an old factory building used to hold refugees who wanted to actually enter the main city. I told her over and over that things were different now in this lawless world, and we needed to look unappealing and unassuming if we wanted to avoid trouble. Yang always just laughed and said I was paranoid. She didn't believe me, continuing to wear the low cuts and short shorts, as if they made her feel free in this confining world._

_After what happened... I think it would have been better if she had just been turned._

_She left us in the middle of the night, saying she wanted to stretch her legs. I offered to go with her, but she told me to guard her sister instead, who had already fallen asleep. I even offered her my knife, our only weapon, the only one small enough to conceal as we were searched before entering this choke point. She shrugged me off, saying she would be fine. Yang wanted to go and make sure where we had hidden our weapons hadn't been found as well. I told her no, it was a stupid risk to wander out into the wilderness over something so frivolous; we couldn't do anything if someone had stolen our belongings anyway. I told Yang that I wanted her back with us in less than an hour. When she didn't show up in two, I knew something was wrong. I woke up Ruby to go find her._

_It didn't take us long; a crowd had already formed outside of the building, circling around a slumped figure. We pushed through the circle, already knowing and dreading what we would find. Something broke inside of Ruby when she found Yang's body dumped against a wall that night, her clothes ripped and her throat slit. Screaming for blood, Ruby stood over the corpse, calling out for the person responsible to come forward. Of course on one did, and if anyone knew they weren't going to talk. Ruby didn't know who had done it, so she decided every man was equally guilty. I saw something snap in Ruby as we were all corralled back into the building for the night._

_Ruby tried to hide what she had done from me. The next morning she tried to drag me off towards the woods away from the front entrance, lying while saying she just couldn't stand to pass through where Yang died. I saw through her lie instantly, and I walked back towards the entrance, unsure of what I would find. I expected some vandalism, or maybe a few injured gatekeepers nursing their wounds._ _But when I walked through the doorway, ignoring the girl behind me who had actually started sobbing while begging me to stop, I realized I should have listened. _

_I never got Ruby to tell me how she did it, I can't even begin to imagine how. But at some point last night, after they all foolishly went back to sleep, unaware who they had crossed, the kind, caring girl who had always been so important to me... hung them all. She hung 19 bodies off of the tree in front of the old metal refinery in the dead of the night. Ruby used up the last of her semblance to catch them all in their sleep.__ So when Ruby failed to stop me, and as I laid eyes on their bodies swaying in the winter winds, the message that had tried to make it through to me for two years finally did._

**_The world had ended._**

_I didn't think that because of the virus, nor did I label it on human cruelty. I knew those were never going away. But in one night, the two things that I relied on to keep reality fair and just were stolen from me. I lost the older sister who I had relied on to keep my thoughts bright, and I lost the partner I relied on to keep my soul pure._

_ I knew that I was just as stained as Ruby was by the culling, because in a way I thought her actions were fitting. The majority of my thoughts were horrified by what Ruby had done, but my darker side could sympathize with her. If she had asked, I know I would have been tempted to help._

_It took an hour to hike far enough from the city to find a burial spot, just under a large oak where the ground hadn't frozen solid. I should have sent Ruby away and done everything myself, but Ruby said it was her responsibility as sister. We couldn't carry her properly; Yang's was still too heavy for our starving bodies to manage. So while I did carry our packs, weapons, and a shovel we had stolen from the warehouse, I... I also made Ruby piggyback her sister's corpse up the mountain. We didn't say anything as we dug the grave, and when we finished Ruby just laid Yang down deep in the earth, and slipped her sister's gauntlets_ _on Yang's now deathly pale arms for the last time. At some point Ruby stopped crying, even when I didn't. And as we filled in the grave and covered up the world's most golden locks, Ruby's eyes only got harder. As we turned to leave that awful place Ruby became a different person all together._

_I just can't believe that was four years ago. Ruby has been dead inside since, and I don't know if I can stay with her much longer. I just can't take this… silence. We don't talk anymore... after all we have seen and done together, what is there to say? The silence just leaves me feeling numb, and I don't know if I am any different to the clickers who we just dealt with less than an hour ago to clear out this building for the night. I don't feel as though I'm living; I'm just putting off my death._

* * *

'_I need to do something about this'_ Weiss thought to herself in the cold storeroom that she was guarding. Her partner was sleeping over in the corner, curled under a desk that Ruby had placed against a wall, so that she wasn't immediately visible. Ruby felt slightly safer out of sight, and she usually didn't okay a room for the night unless the red-head had some way to hide while she slept.

As she looked over at where her partner had hidden herself, Weiss held the few sheets of paper in her hand and contemplating over what she should do about them. And more importantly, what they meant to her. Weiss had gotten used to the feeling of depression over the years of living in this hell, and had written the diary pages in one of her darker moments. Still, six months ago she had obviously been upset with how things were going, and she couldn't say she was any happier now. Sometimes she didn't even feel safe around Ruby anymore; her partner had become unhinged, giving up her humanity to not have to feel the pain of Yang's death any longer. Weiss knew the red-head would always protect her, but Ruby had at some point became disconnected with reality.

Startled when she heard the sudden screech from the table as it was shoved away from the wall, Weiss folded up the papers and slipped them inside of her jacket. _I'd rather not explain what I don't have to… it probably wouldn't go that well anyway._ Stretching her arms over her head and into the air, Ruby emerged from her hiding spot. Weiss took in her partner, who had undergone some drastic changes over the past few years.

Ruby was painfully thin, although pretty much everyone was now with the scarcity of food. The lack of body fat gave the redhead the appearance of a hawk, her face composed of only hard angles. Her clothes hung limply from her frame as she stretched, and her once short-cropped auburn hair now hung down past her shoulders. The redhead's hair was usually a greasy mess nowadays, but rainfall yesterday had washed out the worst of the dirt. A grey, unreadable t-shirt that had once been some video game promotion was under a denim jacket that Ruby had taken to wearing recently. And a belt was pulled tight around a pair of faded blue jeans; the belt had to in order to keep the jeans from falling off of her hips. She wore black hiking boots, which were falling apart and had lost their concealed knife a long time ago.

Ruby was still recognizable though, closer than Weiss resembled her past self. Sure she had lost the baby fat that had clung to her cheeks because of all the sweets, but anyone they had ever met before would know Ruby Rose, even after all this time. What had really changed about Ruby in the last six years though, the only thing that anyone who had known her before the world ended would notice… Ruby's eyes. Once large, bright and full of hope, they had now become beady and small, constantly accompanied by a mad glint accentuated by the dark bags always resting under the orbs. And the pretty silver shade that had once glinted whenever the redhead smiled had grown dull over the years, closer resembling the water collected at the bottom of a pail or bucket. They were the eyes of a corpse.

"Let's get moving" Ruby mumbled as she rubbed away the dust that had accumulated in her eyes over the night. Ruby didn't need much sleep nowadays, 4 hours being more than enough for her to keep going. She usually took first watch so that they could leave early the next morning, so that she wouldn't have to wait for Weiss to wake up. Weiss had learned over the years not to tell Ruby to sleep more; she had received a lot of death glares from the red-head that were simply followed by "I know what I need."

As Weiss nodded and began to repack the few supplies they had taken out of their rucksacks, Ruby observed her partner, just as she knew Weiss had been doing to her only a moment before. The blonde was similarly dressed, and just as thin. It was something that the pair constantly argued over, but Ruby couldn't get Weiss to see sense and abandon old habits. She was so much easier to spot while she stayed dressed in all white, but anytime Ruby tried to get Weiss to wear something else she only received the response "bite me!" Weiss's demeanor was the change anyone else would have noticed before anything else. Ruby didn't see Weiss smile anymore, didn't see her eyes role in the true Weiss fashion. Sometimes when talking to her, the blonde didn't even feel like Weiss. The once upon a time heiress walked with her head bowed and her shoulders hunched in, as if the weight of carrying on was just becoming too much to bear. Maybe it had been for too long.

When they were ready, they both readjusted their weapons and slowly moved the crate that they had used to block the door to the stockroom. They exited the room quietly, leaving behind nothing, so that no one would ever be able to tell that the room had been inhabited for the night. As Ruby lifted Weiss over a crumbling wall that they had vaulted over the night before to get into the apartment building, and then hefted herself up next to her partner, she began to miss the weight she used to keep strapped to her back. Ruby had been forced to abandon her scythe a long time ago; its bulk made it useless in the alley gunfights that the world had devolved to. She now had a hunting rifle slung over her shoulder, and kept a trench knife in her jacket pocket. Weiss had left her rapier behind as well, in favor of a pistol and a simple hunting knife; now that dust was almost impossible to find the one time heiress' weapon had been left utterly useless.

Climbing out of the building and hopping down from the second story balcony, Ruby and Weiss began to walk silently down the deserted street. They had arrived in this city three days ago, and had spent most of their time in the uptown, scouring rich apartments for supplies. Almost as large as the city surrounding Beacon, and definitely far more developed, the trade center had fallen apart a long time ago and belonged to no one now. People had probably tried to reclaim it in the past, but once clickers found their way in… they stayed. Ruby kept on thinking she saw people watching them as they walked down the street from windows, but they were always either figments of her imagination or just the hobbling bodies of infected. Nothing that posed a true threat to them. Still, the red head stayed sharp, and twitched at every motion she saw out of the corner of her eye.

Ruby kept a firm grasp on her rifle's shoulder strap, ready take aim at the drop of a hat. Weiss on the other hand wasn't too worried, nothing could sneak up on them while they were in the open like this, as they walked down the large city street filled with undergrowth. While they walked on she became more relaxed, and soon Weiss was swinging her arms back and forth in large arcs like a bored child while she took in the landscape. Tall buildings leaned above them, some fifty to sixty stories high. Crumbled walls, slowly being taken back by nature, with ivy, moss and lichen grew up the sides of the buildings in snaking paths. It was amazing how quickly nature had taken back the city. Bushes and trees were everywhere, growing from the streets, sidewalk pavement, and even out of some of the sky-high windows in the buildings. Weiss found the sight beautiful, even if it was in an archaic, minimalist way.

The blonde took sight of a particularly beautiful willow that had somehow found the nutrients it needed to survive almost forty stories high. Weiss daydreamed on what it might be like to swing from the branches of the tree so far over the highway, the view that must have been visible from so high up in the sky. She even tried to squeeze out some magic, to try and reach the tree. At the height of her power Weiss could have easily launched herself that high. It was foolish to daydream on such silly ideas, but as she waked she put a slight spring in her step, hoping with every fiber of her being that she would suddenly feel the wind pass by her face as she rocketed into the air. All she got was a startle when she suddenly felt Ruby guiding her away from the sidewalk and into the street by a firm hand on her shoulder.

Looking back at their path, she saw that in their route had been a clicker, one who had laid itself down and was preparing to release spores. It was odd that one had chosen this sunny street to lay itself out on. Clickers tended to stay in dark, closely cramped spaces where they could hear their own echoes. Mushrooms grew from its body as it was coming closer to reaching the final point in its new, warped life cycle. While it could no longer walk, the monster could have very easily reached out and grabbed one of them as they walked by. Nothing could save you from the bite of a clicker… except for a bullet to the head.

_I wonder if that would actually make Ruby cry, if she had to kill me. I haven't seen her cry since Yang was with us... I wonder if I still matter enough to her to break that streak_.

Once the clicker was out of sight, Ruby asked "so… do you have anywhere you want to go?" Ruby was getting just as tired as Weiss of wandering aimlessly, even if she didn't show it as much. Sure it was depressing living without purpose, but at least Weiss was living. That was really all that mattered in the red-head's mind.

"Everywhere's the same" Weiss replied back dryly. Fall was just beginning to turn over to winter, and a cool breeze breathed over their backs from the east. As she rubbed her arms, trying to use friction to warm them, Weiss sighed sadly "why are we still traveling Ruby? We could, I don't know, maybe find a place… try to make it livable…"

"Because…" Ruby began, and then in a deadpan voice quoted "_I don't feel as though I'm living; I'm just putting off my death._"

Weiss stopped dead in her tracks. "You went through my stuff?" Weiss should have been mad, even if she wasn't; the blonde just couldn't believe Ruby had found it in her to care enough to do something like that.

"I got worried" Ruby responded back in a matter of fact tone.

"Over?" Weiss hated asking Ruby to elaborate. Nowadays it felt as though she was pulling teeth from the redhead.

The redhead's eyes closed a fraction of an inch, while mulling over in her head whether or not she should start this. Sighing heavily, Ruby planted her feet in the pavement while still looking forward. "I went through your bag last week when I saw you practicing on a noose…" Ruby huffed, half turning to look back at Weiss through the side of her eye. At the shocked expression from Weiss Ruby continued on "yeah, I was awake for that, although I didn't know how to bring it up." Apparently she still didn't, because Ruby only sighed loudly, running a hand through the hair atop her head. "Would you really want to settle down somewhere?"

Weiss though about that for a moment, and then sighed"no… no, not really".

After a nod from Ruby, they just started walking again for another few minutes, before Weiss stopped. Ruby looked back, worried for a half a second at Weiss's sudden halt. But that worry slipped from her mind when she saw the look on the blonde's face. It was the blank look of when Weiss had gotten lost in her own thoughts. Looking off into the distance, watching their shadows curving and warping over the cracked blacktop and becoming unrecognizable, Weiss asked "do you really think this is some kind of rapture Ruby?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You were the only one of us on the team who actually believed in god… you still wear that cross from your old combat uniform." After a second of silence, with a tension that made it feel as though Ruby had no intention of answering, Weiss added "I still see you praying every now and then."

Ruby looked forward again, her hand caressing the silver cross that hung in the hollow of her throat. Looking up to the sky, she began to walk forward at a slower pace than before. "I… I don't know anymore. But if there is one, he has a really demented sense of humor."

Following behind, Weiss began walking a little faster so that she was walking next to Ruby again. "How so?"

"Isn't it odd that our world named Remnant would fall apart the way it did?" At a puzzled look from Weiss the redhead explained herself in more detail. "We could have all been wiped out by a plague… or there could have been some nuclear explosion that destroyed the planet. There could have been an asteroid, a rogue black hole, a gigantic volcanic eruption… hell, we could have even been destroyed by aliens. It would have made a better story at least." Ruby looked back at her partner, whose brow had furrowed trying to make sense of everything Ruby had suggested. "Instead we were left with this… just a few of us left… trying to cling on to a wasted life, one which I think is unfair and too hard. Just a _**Remnant**_ of what humanity had once been."

That was a little too deep for Weiss, and she didn't know what to say. The blonde hadn't expected Ruby to have seriously though their predicament out that much. Ruby waited for a moment, wondering if Weiss had a differing opinion. It would at least be something worth talking about. When she didn't, Ruby closed back up again, and they both continued to walk in silence again for the next few hours.

As they walked through the city's downtown they took a detour from their planned route every once in a while to loot the odd store as they passed. Most food storages were gone at this point, but once in a while the two got lucky and stumbled across old cans or some preservatives. The pair found enough that morning to consider it a good haul, even though it was only a can of soup and a package of old almonds. They had also found a can of tomato sauce, but the can was bloated, and Ruby remembered from a long time ago not to trust a can that was deformed. The soup was foul, and the nuts crumbled into sand as soon as they hit the moisture in their mouths. Still, the meal would hold them over until tomorrow, and anything else they found for the rest of the day would be extra.

The two didn't waste their time on clothing or electronic stores, even though Ruby seriously needed to pick up a new pair of jeans somewhere. If any more of the fabric wore out she would begin to develop holes around the knees, which would lead to unnecessary injuries. But that was a detour they didn't need to make yet, and every time they entered a store Ruby considered it a risk on their lives. She did duck into a few shoe stores to check for a new pair of boots though, even if she was unsuccessful.

Weiss had been against it in the beginning, but a fair amount of what they looted came from dead bodies. The two would collect the ammo and clothing stored on the packs of those who died and weren't completely picked over by the time Ruby and Weiss found the corpse. As Ruby ripped the pack off of a rotting corpse, a woman who had probably only died a few weeks ago (and was still somewhat fresh by this worlds standards), Weiss listened with her back turned to the whole process. Ruby could be rough with dead bodies, and Weiss felt it was a little disrespectful to mutilate the corpses of those less fortunate. It bothered her to think that someday somebody might do that to their corpse's; just rip her arms off in hopes of finding a spare bullet. After searching for a minute, Ruby exhaled and sighed "nothing," throwing the bag back onto the woman's now mangled body.

Weiss could have just left it at that, she knew what Ruby was going to do if the redhead actually opened her eyes and noticed more than what she was looking for. Still, Ruby did need them more than the corpse did. "I don't think so" Weiss commented dryly over Ruby's shoulder, pointing down at the corpse's lower half. Looking down the redhead saw the dead women's feet, which were covered by a relatively new pair of beige hiking boots. They looked to be around Ruby's size.

Squatting down by the feet while pulling out her knife from her pocket, Ruby sighed "you're a life saver Schnee," and began to cut away, freeing the shoes from their rotting owner. Luckily the feet hadn't begun to rot yet, protected from the elements by the hard leather, and the shoes only stunk of rotting wood and mud. Ruby wasn't too keen on smelling like a corpse, although she would bear the stench if it was the practical approach.

They continued on like this through the entire day, alternating between who was the looter and who was the watchman. When dusk began to approach they decided to stop to find a place to rest for the night on the outskirts of the city. Neither the infected nor the clickers could see in the dark any better than the pair could, but it still wasn't safe to stay out in the open where they could be stumbled upon. The two would probably stay and continue searching through the city for the rest of the week, until they stopped finding enough food to survive off of and were forced to move on. Weiss had found an old bank, and once the two women cleared the premises Ruby was feeling pretty happy with their hideout for the night.

After Ruby checked out the bank vault and marked the spot as a terrible idea for the night (the red head found the idea of dying from suffocating inside of an airtight room unappealing), she walked through the main hall of the bank again starting to worry that maybe their marble stronghold wouldn't actually be the fortress the pair thought it could be. Taking in her surroundings again, shining a small hand wound flashlight on the walls, Ruby began taking in the graffiti. There had been no light for any plant matter to grow over the past six years, so the dozens of messages screaming things such as 'the end is neigh' and 'god has abandoned us' were still well-preserved. Ruby furrowed her brow as she read the walls, finding some sense of vindication at the whiny complaints. _Seems like a waste of ink to me; anyone alive to read that would already be well aware_.

Someone, obviously talented with a can of spray paint, had left an after image of an ATM that had been ripped out of the ground some time ago. The idea of someone laboring to get the money out of the machine seemed funny to Ruby; money lost all of its worth almost instantly when martial law took over, so whoever went through all the trouble probably didn't get much out of their hard work.

"Hey! I found a nice place for the night" Weiss called from the back, leaning around a corner and shining her own light at her partner. "You coming?"

"Yeah… nothing anywhere else anyway…" Ruby mumbled as she trudged over to Weiss.

Weiss had actually found a decent place to hole up in. It was some manager's office, which had escaped the fall and the riots without ever being ransacked. There were no windows, a solid ceiling with no panels, and plenty of furniture to shift around to barricade the door. In short, it was perfect by Ruby's standards. Weiss sat with her back against the wall opposite the door while she watched Ruby push two heavy filing cabinets into place, struggling to move them quietly on her own. Usually she would help, but Weiss was feeling somewhat vindictive, and was perfectly fine with Ruby being the only one to put in the effort into barricading the door.

Dusting off her hands, Ruby asked "so how long do you want to sleep for?"

Weiss just shrugged her shoulders and answered "just wake me when you start feeling tired."

Ruby only nodded, not hurt in the slightest by Weiss's cutting answer. Leaning against the door, and then sliding down to reach its base, Ruby began to play with a Rubik's cube she had found earlier in the day.

Weiss would have just fallen asleep at that point, but something had been chewing away at the back of her mind all day. "Were you really that bothered when you thought I might…?" Weiss wasn't able to voice the end of her question. She just raised her fist behind her head, and made the motion of someone hanging themselves.

Ruby nodded her head, saying absentmindedly "rope is an extremely useful tool. I'd keep some around if I wasn't afraid you'd be tempted."

* * *

**_"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.  
_****_And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."  
_****_~Friedrich Nietzsche_**


	2. Red Wine

_Now that we're in an actual city, I'm finding myself with access to things like paper again. It's been nine months since I last wrote anything. I think. Yeah, it's been nine months. Things have changed since then, but I wouldn't say that those changes have been for the better._

_I don't know when, I found out three months ago, but at some point Ruby read my last diary entry. She called me out on what was in it. About the very last part. I should have been mad, but I thought that maybe… when she heard how unhappy I was… that she might try to be, I don't know, different. More like my old Ruby. But she didn't take it that way. Instead, she decided that my note just signaled we needed a change of pace._

_It's the dead of winter now, and even though it's been mild this year, it's also been far too long. We're three months in, and I don't see it getting any warmer anytime soon. Winter always brings more death. Food shortages, unstable settlements, dangerous starving wild men roaming the streets and roads desperate for anything they can use or claim. We all kill more in the winter. Both to protect, and to take. Usually Ruby and I travel north this time of year, towards the equator, trying to get a little closer to the sun's warmth and the oceans protection. All of us wanderers do this though, and it brings thousands of humans, all itching to defend themselves, closer together._

_Ruby decided that instead of just hiding like we usually do during these months, we should use the winter chaos to our advantage. We traveled to Caric, one of the hand full of actually functioning cities on this continent, and we found those in charge of the underground. I thought we were just going on a raid when we entered the back alley warehouse. We'd done it before. Locate a storehouse, sneak in, steal as much as we could, and then fight our way out. It worked well in the past. But when Ruby stood in front of the kingpin, she instead made an application. Our names were well-known in this part of the rotting heap of a world, and she wanted a roof over our heads in exchange for our service._

_It was horrifying. I'd seen her do it before, but usually she at least looked conflicted over what she was about to do. The head honcho, Bradley, told us 'I'd be more than happy to employee you both, the two famous berserkers, but unfortunately we have no room for you now. I'm fully staffed at this **particular** moment, but I'd have no reason to not hire you if I did have the room'. Ruby understood what he was implying before anyone else did. She had always been a quick thinker. Before anyone else caught his double meaning, Ruby walked over to the corner where two gambling men weren't paying close attention, and held a gun to the back of the dealer's head. She executed them both, one shot in the back of the head, the other through the eye. She shot them with my gun, and then gave it back to me as though nothing had happened._

_The two men she killed, who I found out later were Bradley's lieutenants, were both tasked with enforcing Bradley's control over the city. I guess we took that job when Ruby took their lives. Bradley wasn't even mad; he found Ruby's open display of violence interesting. No, interesting isn't strong enough of a word. Intoxicating? Yeah, intoxicating is the word I'm looking for. We've put our lives in the hands of a drunk. What sane leader is okay with his two main men are just slaughtered in cold blood? But that only meant that when someone else better than us comes along… well, he'll probably want a really good show when that day comes along, maybe give the two to replace us the jump on us or something._

_The worst thing though, that makes every part of this worse? Ruby thinks she did that for me. Somewhere, in her twisted mind, she thinks I would want this!? She didn't get rid of the silence! She only replaced it with senseless violence! And over what?! We kill people, who have loved ones and families just like me, over mere inches of territory! Back alleys, side streets. Little things, all of which mean nothing in the grand scheme to anyone! All of our fighting is just a pissing contest between Bradley and the other kingpins, and I'm sure they don't give a shit over the lives their ending! I don't want to live if it means I'm making other people die!_

_I'm not going to keep doing this for much longer. I'll give her one week, and either she'll be able to see my sadness, or I'm leaving her behind. She's not the same any more. Maybe Ruby deserves to be in a hellhole like this._

* * *

Ruby leaned around the corner of the warehouse wall, waving to get her friend's attention. Slapping the wall of Weiss's room lightly, seeing her partner's head jerk up as her train of thought was broken, the redhead called out to her partner saying "Weiss, we gotta go." Nodding absentmindedly, Weiss stood up and began shuffling towards Ruby, twisting her neck and hearing it pop twice as she loosened her stiff muscles. Weiss had just been sitting on her cot, fully clothed in her pure white winter gear, staring off into space at one of the warehouse walls. She did that a lot lately.

The infamous duo had received the best sleeping quarters besides Bradley himself when they took his right and left hand men's positions, inside of the interior warehouse. Their rooms used to be two side by side offices, whose interior call center equipment had been ripped out and replaced with the furnishings of an apartment bedroom. It was actually warm here, and they both were able to sleep through the full night without taking watches for once. While Weiss hated everything else that went on here, she had fallen in love with that small treat. The blonde couldn't remember the last time she had been able to sleep through the night uninterrupted. And while Weiss couldn't be sure, she suspected that Ruby wasn't advantage of the opportunity. The dark bags under the redhead's eyes told Weiss that her partner was still sleeping very little.

Ruby had casually leaned against the door, and hummed lightly as Weiss strode past her "Bradley's given us a job for the day." Weiss only shrugged as she turned down the corridor leading to the central part of the building, already dreading the day's events. So who were they going to have to rough up today? Were they going to beat some people senseless for no reason again?

As they weaved through the warehouse and into the back alley that connected to Bradley's stronghold, Ruby gave off a visible shiver as she stepped into the cold snow-paved alley. Ruby was always a bit more edgy this time of year; the red-head really hated the cold and the sharp painful needly tingle it left in her fingers. If they could find a doctor he would probably have said Ruby had bad circulation in her hands, but neither of the two had run into one in the last seven years. Hopping up and down Ruby said "let's get out of this alley and into the sunlight."

Weiss followed behind Ruby, and as they left the back alley and walked down the streets leading to today's job they both listened to the dozens of cat calls they received from the random passersby. Weiss couldn't care less about the idiots, she knew they were just being stupid. To Weiss, there was actually something amusing about their obvious desperation; she thought their hasty attempts at flirting from across the street were almost pitiful. Ruby didn't have that sense of humor though. She'd shoot anyone who even attempted to make a move on them a heart stopping glare, one that pretty much silenced any person with even a single shred of sense. Those who didn't quickly learned from their mistake. Ruby still didn't trust men after what had happened to Yang; she probably never would, and had smashed a lot of noses over the years when a suitor got closer than Ruby found acceptable. The distance varied with her mood; sometimes being less than a foot, and sometimes Ruby would stalk all the way down a street to deal with a particularly annoying heckler.

When Ruby took a turn away from their usual path through the snow-covered streets, Weiss sighed and asked "so, what are we doing today?"

Ruby sighed and answered "Bradley wants us to send a message to someone on east end. Sent us to clear the place out."

"Do we have to?" Weiss complained, uneager to have to end any more lives.

"**We** aren't doing anything; it's a one person job. You're just here as a look out; I just need you to look pretty and make me feel a little safer."

"But why are we even doing this Ruby? We could just leave the city now… winter is over." That last part wasn't true yet; it was still cold enough out that the two could see their breath leaving the scarves in front of their faces. But unless the universe had decided to send everyone into an unexpected ice age, winter would have to be over within the next few weeks.

"Bradley is giving us a box of ammo each, some sign of good faith I guess, when we finish this job. It's one of the last things we need to make it through the spring… once we get those…" Ruby then shrugged her shoulders and finished nonchalantly "then we are leaving."

Weiss was stunned by Ruby's statement. She had never even gotten the slightest whiff of Ruby wanting to move on. It was day four of the seven days she had given Ruby to pack up and leave. A little more than suspicious at the coincidence, Weiss snapped "have you been going through my stuff recently?"

"Hmph, nope… should I still be?" Ruby couldn't watch Weiss as closely as before, now that they both had separate quarters and full schedules. It wasn't a secret to the town that Weiss was on the suicidal side, as if to balance out her partner's psychotic sadistic streak. Ruby tried to watch over her as best she could, but there wasn't much to stop Weiss from disappearing for few hours to make a noose or find a razor in a city this large. It was something Ruby worried about every day, and she made a point to always be up before and go to bed after Weiss. If she was ever going to do something, that would probably be the time she'd try.

"No you shouldn't! I'm just... a little surprised by your sudden change in tone. What made you change your mind?"

Walking across the cracked sidewalk, Ruby suddenly froze when she looked at how meticulously someone had scraped the snow into a knee-high wall bordering the walkway. Sneering at the snow while speaking to Weiss, Ruby muttered "you're obviously not happy… and personally, I would rather not keep pushing my luck. Bradley thinks we're a pair of god damn miracle workers, and I know he's going to ask us for something we just can't pull off sooner or later. He's not going to take it well when I say no". Swinging her leg, Ruby let her boot tip rip through and ruin the perfect snow bank someone had obviously spent a lot of time making earlier in the morning. Apparently the idea of someone wasting time on something so frivolous was frustrating to the redhead. After a second, third, and fourth kick, the section of the wall they were standing by looked more like a lumpy hill than the perfectly groomed snow bank it had been only a moment before. Looking back at Weiss once she was satisfied with her work, Ruby added "neither one of us is getting what we want out of this arrangement, so I don't see any point in trying to keep it up."

"Alright… are we just going to disappear?"

"I'm still working on that part… anyway, we're here." Ruby waved her hand to signal the discussion was over, and slid her hand into her coat pocket, wrapping her fingers around the wooden grip of the snub pistol she had been loaned a few months earlier. It took a lot of paying off for Bradley to be able to sneak a firearm this deep into the city, and he would be pretty upset if Ruby ended up losing it. Firearms were prohibited inside of the inner districts of the city, and Bradley didn't have many. It was supposed to be a sign of trust… Bradley didn't want to lose the pair's loyalty, as they're names were well known all across the western half of this continent. Saying he had the two ex-huntresses roaming the streets was like saying he had an oiled up, fully operational tank patrolling the city.

As Weiss took in where they were walking, she saw the old, rusty building that doubled as a bootleg alcohol distillery. And Weiss actually knew who they were walking towards.

Trying to grab the redhead's coat, her fingers slipping on the slick nylon material, Weiss tried to stop Ruby. "Ruby!" the heiress hissed in a feverish whisper, trying to convey her reluctance. "This is… this is suicide! This isn't a one person job; it's a ten or twenty person assault! This is Diego's territory now, we lost it last month!"

"Yeah, I told Bradley that as well. _But apparently_ he and Diego are meeting somewhere on neutral turf to talk things out right about now. Tensions are high, and I guess they don't want to get into another gang war. At least that's what Diego thinks… this pretty much proves Bradley still wants Diego's head on a pike. So Bradley's betting on most of Diego's goons being away; he'll probably want to intimidate us with how many more people they have."

Weiss hissed "so what if most of their people are away? Diego is no fool; he probably left like ten guys behind!"

Pointing across the street, Ruby growled "just watch for any damn reinforcements from that building over there. I'll give a signal when I've cleared them all out".

Putting her hands on her hips, Weiss mocked "oh! I see! Perfect plan Ruby, perfect plan!" Stopping for one second for dramatic effect, Weiss then added "just one quick question though? What the fuck am I supposed to do if there _are_ reinforcements huh?!"

Throwing her hands up in the air as she walked away, Ruby grumbled "I don't know Weiss! Be creative! I'm sure you'll figure something out!"

* * *

Reluctantly, hurling a steady stream of curses at her partner under her breath as she pulled herself over the iron fence and up to the balcony, Weiss did what she was told. Crouching against a brick wall to protect herself from the most of the winds bite, she was now watching over the street from the balcony terrace across the stronghold. Watching as Ruby approached, Weiss was just as impressed as always by how nonchalantly Ruby walked towards what could very well be her death.

Ruby loped gracefully up to the building through the snow, which had one lone guard sitting on an overturned barrel in front of the rusty warehouse doors. The man didn't take any notice to Ruby's approach while he watched the tongues of flame dancing upwards from a trash can fire he was using to keep warm. Weiss guessed that Ruby would try to slip by the man and keep on moving forward into the factory. Instead she was instead when her partner waked up to him calmly and tapped on his shoulder. The guard made the mistake of looking up, and a flash of silver flew by as Ruby's knife slashed across the man's throat. Even from this distance Weiss could see the spray of red that trailed behind the arc of Ruby's knife. He grabbed at his throat, futily trying to stop the bleeding while he silently thrashed on the ground. Before he even came to understand what was going on he had gone still. Ruby wasted no time, and heaved up the corpse under it armpits, careful not to let the man's throat leak blood onto her jacket. She dragged his body around the side of the building, being extremely careful to not have his ruined throat leak all over the path. Weiss had known this Ruby for so long, she could almost hear the redhead's logic in her mind. _'If I had let him live, he might have ran for reinforcements. I had to kill him or he would have caused problems for Weiss and I. And if someone saw his body they might do the same.'_

Ruby then walked back to the front of the building, and kicked fresh snow over the scarlet patch where a man had been only moments before. Weiss saw Ruby cast a glance back at the two deep tracks where the corpse's legs had dug into the snow. But nothing could be done about those though; at least they weren't immediately suspicious. Ruby, now carrying her pistol in hand, slowly moved into the building through the door that her victim had been stationed outside.

The minutes of waiting were excruciatingly long, and as Weiss listened for anything that could give a hint to if Ruby was safe or not, she began to wonder what she would do if Ruby did actually die. Weiss couldn't do anything to help her now if things went south; she had only brought her hunting knife with her for the 'trip'. Ruby's life was extremely important to her, but in the end it just couldn't more important than her own. _I guess… I guess I would travel southwest maybe, back across the plains. Most of the trees would be bearing fruit about now, and I doubt many people would want to wander the wilderness in this weather. I'm better in the cold than most… I could make it. It would be somewhat safe at least. From there… I guess I would-_

Weiss would have kept on going, but she snapped out of her thought process by the sound of gunfire. It was barely audible as it resonated from deep within the storage facility, but the noise was still unmistakable. Bullets were precious; they were pretty much your only connection to life while you were in a pinch, so someone wasn't just firing off a few rounds for fun. Someone was really trying to kill somebody else. After the six shots Weiss heard, all that was audible afterwards was total piercing silence, and Weiss strained to hear anything else through the wind that had begun to whistle across the street. It felt as though her heart was in her throat, and as she felt the blood pounding in her ears, the blonde had a hard time swallowing.

_I wonder if I actually meant-_

Weiss sighed in relief when she heard a faint, piercing melody from across the street. A whistle the two had made up years ago, it was only four simple notes. Just two short tweets followed by two long, deep trills. When Ruby had made it up she joked "for the living who don't need mourned, and the dead who should be remembered". So Ruby was fine.

Weiss jumped down from the terrace, bending her knee's as soon as she landed to absorb the majority of the impact, and quickly ran across the street. With her hunting knife drawn Weiss slipped through the doorway, eager to find Ruby and leave. Ruby had probably thrown caution to the wind and started looting, scrounging up ammo and food from the premises. She probably hadn't even stopped to consider that there might have been more men nearby, men who ran for reinforcements as soon as they heard gunshots instead of standing and fighting the redhead.

As Weiss ran down a long hallway, she almost tripped over two dead bodies lying just behind a corner in a turn in the hall. Both of the two had received deep puncture wounds to the neck. Stepping gingerly over the corpses, respectfully nodding to the two dead men, she continued down the hallway at a lighter pace. Entering a large, open room with a tanker taller than herself and her partner combined against one wall, she found Ruby leaning against the wall next to the hallway entrance. Ruby just grunted at Weiss when the blonde strode past her, craning her neck while cradling her left arm in front of her face. She gingerly pulling at her jacket's fabric, which now had a red splotch slowly growing over her upper left arm.

"Get hit?"

"Yep. Gave the two dumbasses over there a chance to surrender after they saw me kill that one over there. They were the only ones left" Ruby began, jerking her head in the direction of a pair of corpses over in the corner. Only one set of legs were visible from behind the box they had taken cover behind, although there were two chest high blood splatters on the walls behind the boxes. "Tall one decided to fire on me instead".

Casting a glance around, counting six bodies, Weiss asked "how many were there?"

"Nine. I'm guessing you already saw the two in the hall, there's one in that office over there, and finally the six out here in this open area" Ruby answered. She chuckled to herself and said "well, actually ten. I almost forgot about the guy outside".

"Hmm…" was Weiss's only response. She didn't like a chuckle being Ruby's response to an ended life. "Well, let's go… you're not going to bleed out any time soon, and we can patch you up when we get back."

"We aren't done yet" Ruby muttered, ripping a scrap of cloth from one of her fallen foes. Wrapping it around her upper arm, she pulled one end with her right fist, using her teeth to hold the other end of the strip tightly in place. She gave out a small groan while she tightened the bandage, and then began to walk over to the large vat off against the warehouses wall. Ruby had been shot before; the pain was nothing new to her.

Taking two steps up a small ladder, Ruby unhooked a latch and lifted the lid off of the industrial sized vat, peering down into its murky contents. Ruby had never liked the tastes or the effects of booze, either before or after the end of the world. Who wanted to stumble around, loud and noisy, having the time of your life, and then not remember any of it the next day? And with the horrible headache to boot, Ruby couldn't remember a single positive quality about any of her drunken experiences with the rest of the group. Well, other than hearing some funny stories from the rest of the team. Even those had usually been at the redheads own expense, being that Ruby had possessed almost zero tolerance for liquor. Weiss on the other hand enjoyed the sense of release and euphoria alcohol had given her, and remembered her few experiences with the colorful cocktails she had enjoyed in her youth with her friends fondly. But she also understood how dangerous a foggy mind was in this world now, and abstained from it for that reason alone.

But to others though… a keg of beer was worth a box of ammo, maybe even the rifle along with the bullets as well. And by the looks of it, Diego had succeeded in making enough alcohol to fill an armory.

"Bradley told me to do this, although I find it a bit excessive. It'll definitely be sure to ruin Diego's day though." Ruby walked over to one of the bodies on the floor, the closest one to her, and began hefting it up over her shoulder. Once she got the corpse, who the red head had stabbed in the back before anyone had noticed her approach, over her good shoulder, Ruby walked back over to the vat and tried to lift the body over the lip of the container and into the basin. She ended up sliding the heavy body up the side of the tanker.

Weiss, who had gone slightly green at the thought of Ruby's actions, would have let her partner continue on if she hadn't seen the bodies face. It wasn't some hardened, bearded face of most of the men in this world. It was the face of a child, with a pencil thin mustache and a wispy under-beard. He couldn't have been older than seventeen.

"Not him" Weiss called out solemnly as Ruby prepared to let him go into the vat. Ruby pulled him back down, not even stopping to question why Weiss had singled out the body. To Ruby, that was all they were. Bodies. She grabbed another one after she unceremoniously dropped the kid's corpse next to the vat, and swung the replacement in before Weiss could find something worth mourning about in this one as well. A sloshing sound could be heard from the basin as the body fell in, and a spray of foam leapt into the air, similar to the splash someone saw when a large rock was thrown into a lake.

As Ruby slammed shut the lid on the basin and redid the clasp, whistling to herself while she did so, Weiss asked in a shaky tone "how can you be so okay with this?" Looking around, distraught, Weiss continued on. "These people, they weren't bad people. At least, we can't know if they were. They were just… they were just… they just were on a different side than we were. Some of these people were children, or probably had children."

In the dead tone Ruby used to block out pain she responded "I'm more interested in _what_ a person represents than _who_ that person actually is."

Weiss couldn't take that dead voice from her friend anymore. All it did was mock the old Ruby, the one who had laughed and cried freely when the world threw challenges her way. The one who had once been the most important person in Weiss's life. She still was, although not in the same way. Angrily the blonde yelled "STOP GIVING ME YOUR STUPID FUCKING RIDDLES! JUST GIVE ME AN HONEST-TO-GOD STRAIGHT FUCKING ANSWER FOR ONCE!"

After a moment of silence, which Ruby just spent staring at Weiss unashamedly, the heiress turned on her heel and began to stalk out of the factory. "Fuck you Ruby…"

She would have kept on going, but the blonde heard a sad mumble behind her. Weiss stopped, looking back at her partner. Through hard eyes Ruby stared at Weiss and whispered sadly "you're right. Some of these people were children. They probably weren't bad, and they most likely did have families relying on them to provide…" Shaking her head slowly, Ruby continued on with what she had to say, defending her own choices as much as she was explaining for Weiss.

"But where you see a kid, one who had a family who needed him, or had a girl who depended on him… all I can see is a guard. An _armed_ guard. A guard who would have killed you without a second thought, if that was what it took to survive and protect his loved ones. I can't blame him for it… because I'm doing the same thing. I'm playing the same game. To me, we are… no, we _were_ both fair fighters, equals in our competition for survival. He only lost to me in a fair fight…"

And with that, Ruby strode past Weiss and out of the factory, unable to bear the troubled and saddened look she was getting from her partner any longer.

* * *

"You girls are golden!" Bradley exclaimed, eyeing his two most valuable weapons as he strode back and forth in front of them. He took a swig from a bottle of whisky that he had been enjoying, and then hollered loudly "I can't believe you even went through with… well, with the thing with the tanker". Weiss found it gross how he could continue drinking his liquor while listening to their… well really it was just Ruby's report. Weiss didn't really have much to contribute. He had already been drinking before they got back, and Weiss found it repulsive watching the man calling the shots stumbling around his throne drunkenly.

Bradley was in his mid-forties, already going grey and wrinkled from constant stress. He wasn't fat, but he definitely hadn't experienced the hunger most survivors had in the recent months. Bradley wasn't a leader; he was just charismatic enough to get people to follow him. That, paired with a few lucky calls, were really the only reasons he was in charge. Ruby and Weiss were both natural leaders in their own rights, and could have led these people better, even if they didn't want to. A stoned Weiss would have probably been better at calling the shots than a sober Bradley any day. And Ruby had already influenced Bradley several times, tempering his rage so that he wouldn't do something stupid enough to destroy everything, including Weiss.

"Of course, I have you to thank, little missy…" Bradley began, leaning down to caress Ruby's face. Ruby caught his hand and twisted it so roughly that Bradley was forced to turn around, and shoved the drunk away.

"Bradley, while I am fond of you," Ruby lied, "try to touch either one of us again and I'll take your hand off."

Bradley just chuckled at Ruby's threat, obviously not taking her seriously as he should have, and said "you shouldn't worry; you aren't much of a match to my particular tastes anyway. Prefer them a little more… exotic. You're both a tad too plain."

"You're drunk" Ruby grumbled sourly, frustrated and a little panicked at how long this was taking. Ruby didn't want to stick around for long; she knew that Diego would be mounting an assault as soon as he got word of how he'd been backstabbed so quickly. "Anyway, deals a deal. Where's our reward?"

Bradley just jerked his head over to a drawer off by the wall, already beginning to walk off, humming to himself while cradling his stupid booze. He thought he had nothing to worry, that his people would be there to protect him when Diego came knocking. It would be a cruel slap from reality when he found out his two best fighters had disappeared in the night.

Opening the cabinet Ruby found her prizes, and tucked the two boxes under her good arm while turning back to Weiss. "Alright, let's go… uh, hang out I guess." While nobody was around, it probably wasn't the best idea to just announce to the world their preparation to bail on the gang. Weiss shrugged her shoulders and turned, walking back to her room.

* * *

"So… how long do you think it will be before they realize we're gone?" Weiss looked back over her shoulder at Caric, and as its skyline receded into the distance she didn't feel any sense of sadness while leaving the city behind. Weiss would be totally fine with putting these last three months behind her, and forgetting the experience all together.

"Won't matter, we'll be long gone by then" was Ruby's only answer. Ruby was actually just thankful that they were able to get out of the city without a hitch. "What I wouldn't give to be there when Bradley hears how we've screwed him over though." With a laugh Ruby commented dryly "it'll probably sober him up real quick."

After the two had slipped off to Weiss's quarters, Ruby had stood with her back to Weiss's door while she watched her partner pack up her stuff for the road. Weiss was smart and decided to not take every single possession, so that if someone did walk by her room tonight they wouldn't find it barren. They then repeated the process for Ruby's room, which took substantially less time. The red head had packed up about an hour after she read Weiss's newest journal entry two days earlier, and had spent the past 48 hours thinking of ways to nonchalantly bring up leaving. She would never have taken Bradley's suicide mission otherwise. Ruby wasn't a fool, and knew how bad an idea the mission was the moment it left Bradley's lips. But as far as timing was considered it was perfect; it gave her the excuse she needed to say she wanted to leave. And as far as Ruby knew Weiss wasn't any more suspicious than she should have been.

It took the pair about an hour to go from being inside Bradley's stronghold to leaving the city limits. They could have done it in a quarter of the time, but Ruby thought walking out the main southern exit to the city probably wouldn't be the best idea, and if they really were sneaking out they might as well be thorough. The pair had both discussed beforehand whether it would be better to hide in the city until morning the next day before they left, or to brave the surrounding wilderness for the night. In the end they decided to take the risk and brave the wilds for just one night. While being out in the wilderness weaponless was dangerous, if they were still in around when Diego decided to attack they would surely not survive. Ruby knew she was only able to take out those ten men singlehandedly today because the first seven she caught unaware, and killed the last three in the scramble of confusion that followed immediately after she had been discovered. Against a larger force, in a fair fight, Ruby knew she didn't have much hope of getting Weiss out alive. Ruby was a better fighter than anyone in this new world order, but she still had to answer to human limitations.

And as an added bonus, if someone did notice their absence, Bradley wouldn't be able to send anyone after the duo until morning. No one who wasn't as desperate as the pair was would leave the city and stumble around in the forest at night, just to go get the women who would already have a vast lead on the searchers and be better equipped to deal with their pursuers as well. Knowing Bradley's personality he would probably just call it quits and curse his losses. Sometimes it really was nice being overestimated.

Stopping by a fallen tree, Ruby grunted while she rolled the trunk a few rotations, and then grabbed her old rifle out from a small hole in the ground. "I missed you baby" Ruby joked, mocking how much she used to love her old weapon. She quickly leaned down and handed Weiss her trusted revolver. Flashing the heiress a strained smile, Ruby shoved her hands in her pockets and grumbled "let's get going..."

After walking for about thirty minutes the sun began to set, and Ruby lit up the flashlight she kept on an o-ring that attached to her pack's shoulder strap. Ruby left it dangling there, pointing at the ground and the white snow they were walking over. It didn't offer much light, but it did keep the surrounding ten foot radius visible in the approaching winter dusk.

Ruby turned to Weiss, who was nervously watching the surrounding trees, and asked "you have any particular direction you want to go in?"

"No… you know I never do" Weiss answered, actually feeling slightly safer because of her partners relaxed attitude. There couldn't be anything more dangerous in these woods than the person standing next to her. Weiss had to believe that.

"Thought so" Ruby quipped lightly. Sticking out her hand and pulling in her thumb, Ruby wiggled her four fingers in front of Weiss's face, casting forked shadows across the blondes scowl. "Pick a number."

"Four" Weiss just sighed. So they were just going to leave this up to chance as well?

Ruby looked at her hand for a moment, and then grinned sheepishly "pick again."

"What? No, Ruby… just pick one."

"Nope, I'm the driver and you're the navigator, remember?"

"And why can't we just use the one I picked?"

Ruby chuckled and said "forgot we can't go north from here, we're already on the northern most coastline… unless someone found out they could swim across an ocean and hasn't told me yet?"

"Uhhhhhhhh…" Weiss groaned, even though she was having fun with the joking. She thought about it for a moment, and went "Okay then… two?

"Good choice! We haven't gone any farther east than here in over five years!" And with that, Ruby turned on a ninety degree angle to her left and led Weiss forward towards whatever they were going to find next in this hellish adventure of theirs.

* * *

**So, more of an action chapter than I had originally planned. I actually toned this down a lot from what I had originally wrote. The first time I wrote it everything in the middle part was from Ruby's perspective instead of Weiss's. Made it a little too graphic, definitely pushed the story over into M.**

**Give a rating and a review; let me know if I have a spelling error up there somewhere, or if you really enjoyed it.**

**(Last edited 10-31-14)**


	3. Dying Lights

"Fifty six?"

"Up"

"Seventy five?"

"Down"

"Sixty six?

"Down"

"Sixty… Ruby, this is stupid. Let's do something else" Weiss complained, tired of always losing this game to Ruby. Over the last hour they had both learned that while Ruby could usually land on her partner's number within ten guesses, Weiss had been forced into cheating to get the redhead to just lose one game. The blonde was horrible at guesswork, and over the past hour hadn't even once hit Ruby's number before Weiss used up her ten chances.

"Well excuse me for trying to keep you entertained…" Ruby sighed. She was fine with stopping though; Ruby had the game rigged anyway. Blake had taught her a long time ago that no matter what, even if the other person cheated, a game like this could always be won in eight guesses. It came in use back when Ruby used to mess with Juane during their study sessions, and towards the end he thought the redhead was some "mind Jedi" or something. Ruby only lost when she messed up her mental math.

"Yeah… because this was soooo entertaining."

"And because of that jewel of a comment," Ruby grumbled "I'll leave you to come up with the next road trip game."

* * *

Their "road trip" had lasted the past two weeks, as they slowly wandered their way east through the forests on their way away from Caric. It had been two weeks since they abandoned the city, and during that time the pair hadn't run into a single person, dead or alive. They hadn't even seen a corpse! That or the dead bodies were still covered by so much snow that they weren't visible. But out of sight equaled out mind, and it was definitely a morale booster to not have to see dead bodies in the streets or slumped against walls every day. Unfortunately, the weather showed no signs of changing anytime soon, and it still lightly snowed most days.

_Most days_. Today heavy snow was coming at them at a forty degree angle, and as a harsh gale whipped by their faces and through their hair the icy wind stung their cheeks, leaving the pair with a constant blush. At least it was the type of snow that was immediately hard as soon as it landed. If the pair had been forced to hike through knee-high snow they would have made a tenth of the progress they had. Other than an odd depression every once in a while in the snow where they would suddenly sink to around thigh deep in the ice, they were mostly able to just walk across the powdery water as though it wasn't even there.

Still though, even with the winds annoying bite, the experience was actually somewhat refreshing. Just walking through the forests and farming country was nice, not having to worry about constant threats like people or zombies. Ruby liked to spend her quiet moments daydream that nothing had happened over the last seven years, and she was only out on a hike with Weiss again. The redhead had actually gotten her partner to do that with her on the rare occasion in the past, after weeks upon weeks of constant prodding. But Ruby didn't let herself daydream for too long though; those days were long gone, and dwelling on them would only give Ruby unnecessary heartache over what she'd lost.

After a small, uncomfortable silence while they both waited to see if the other wanted to say anything they returned to walking in silence. Trying to be sly, as Ruby usually got annoyed when her blonde partner scrutinized her, Weiss cast a reproachful eye over at her partner. Ruby actually looked… better. She looked happier. The months of stable meals and protection from the elements had left the two stronger than they usually were this time of year, and in better spirits as well. And as much as Ruby hated to let the change happen, she had actually been sleeping more too. Not by a large amount, but maybe instead of the redhead's usual four hours of sleep, Ruby would now get five. And while she had raise hell the next day, Ruby had actually slept for six hours after Weiss decided to not wake the redhead after a long day of traveling. The dark marks under Ruby's eyes were actually disappearing slightly, and now you actually had to look to see the slight purple bags that dusted the tops of Ruby's cheeks.

But by thinking of how good things were right now, Weiss couldn't help but remember all the times that were bad. Last year had been a particularly rough ordeal, worse than any other year before that. Weiss remembered almost starving to death on multiple occasions through that winter, and the same had been true for her partner. If they hadn't gotten lucky and found a hibernating bear, which still put up a decent fight against the two severely weakened women, they definitely would have died out in the cold, starved under some tree. Still, this time of year was difficult for another reason as well.

Weiss cast another glance at her partner, uneager to ruin the happy morning. As much as she had found Ruby's game annoying, she knew the conversation they were about to have would be painful, and either end in silence or in screams. Still, it was one they needed to have. The fact that this was going to be so hard to talk about was one of the few things that proved to Weiss that Ruby was still human, somewhere in that labyrinth of a mind.

With a heavy sigh, Weiss began "well, I've been avoiding a certain topic… and I think you have been too."

"I don't want to get into it." There was a sense of finality in Ruby's tone, and anyone else would have stopped there. But Weiss knew she had to keep going.

"But I do. It's important."

"But I don't, and I say it's not."

"Don't you think we should at least say something…" Weiss then mumbled meekly "today marks that it's been five years since-"

Her partner cut Weiss off, giving the blonde an incredulous look. "Say something!? What is there to say?" Ruby then sarcastically announced to the air "Yang, heeeeey sis, what's up! Just wanted to give you a holler… letcha know what's been going on." Ruby paused theatrically for a moment, and then cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled at the top of her lungs "maybe say sorry for letting you get raped and killed five years ago… but hey, accidents happen right? Best wishes, your little sis Ruby!"

"Come on Ruby!" Pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers, Weiss tried to think of another way to approach this. The only reason Ruby was being combative was because the redhead really didn't want to feel anything for her dead sister; Ruby didn't want to mourn her losses. Thinking of a new angle, Weiss began again saying "let's just say she is up…up there… on some cloud or something. I personally don't think so, but I know you do. Is that what you really would want to say to her?"

"What would you say I tell her? You apparently think there is some way that I should go about this. Why don't you take the lead?"

"Ruby, it doesn't matter what I would like to say to her… this is about what _you_ want to say to _your_ sister."

Ruby sniffed back while running a hand through her hair "I think any normal person would be able to guess what I have to say… I'm not too keen on outward expression and things like that nowadays anyway. Yang wouldn't have a hard time guessing my thoughts if she actually wanted to; we were never the…" Ruby scrunched her face up for a moment as she tried to think of a way to put her thoughts into words, and then made air quotes while finishing her thought. "We weren't the '_sharing feelings'_ type of siblings anyway."

Something in that sentence sounded wrong to Weiss, although she couldn't quite place her finger on what it was. Ruby took advantage of Weiss's moment of thinking, not wanting to talk about this any longer. And as luck would have it, something gave Ruby the perfect excuse to kill the conversation.

Ruby shushed Weiss, and motioned with a hand gesture past the trees that they were about to walk through. Howls, snarls, and a large number of barks could be heard past a small hill that hid from view whatever was going on over the steep slope. Pulling her hunting rifle off of her shoulder, Ruby crept forward quietly, already prepared to fire the rifle at an enemy. While they hadn't seen any people, they had seen large amounts of wildlife wandering through the wilderness, and sometimes a pack of wolves could be more dangerous than a group of humans. Humans can at least be bargained with if something goes wrong. There isn't any bartering with feral wolf, one who hasn't seen a human in over seven years.

As Ruby peered over the ledge with Weiss following close behind, she caught a glimpse of what was causing all the commotion. A pack of wolves had surrounded two feral dogs, one of which was lying motionless on the ground. It was interesting to see the dark brown hound standing over its light beige pack mate, even though from here it looked as though the dog it was trying to protect had already died, its eyes faded and its tongue hanging lazily out of its mouth. The darker terrier should have just run; it would have probably been able to survive if it had. Instead, the two watched silently as the dog was overwhelmed and pushed to the ground by several members of the wolf pack, the rest running around the struggling terrier to feast on the other fallen hound.

A startlingly loud gunshot rang out across the field, and the entire pack of hounds scattered at the sound, not taking a single moment to search for the origin of the echo.

"What the hell Weiss!" Ruby yelled loudly at her partner, who still had her gun pointed into the air. "You couldn't have done anything…"

Weiss just shrugged, and began to walk towards the two dogs while calling over her shoulder "I guess I'm also being irrational today."

Ruby followed behind sourly, knowing that Weiss was just taking out her frustrations on her._ You want to play that way Weiss? Fine. _Ruby was angered by Weiss's actions; they were just a waste of resources and a burden of heartache. But more than that though… the blonde made Ruby actually feel guilty over all that she put Weiss through.

_Maybe I'm just selfish… making her live like this with me. It's obvious she doesn't want to keep going any longer… but I don't want to die yet. And I can't live without her. I know she doesn't love me anymore… and I can't bring myself to love her in the way I used to either; I had to give up those feelings to make myself strong enough to just keep her alive. But I won't live on my own in this world. It's too cruel, and I'd rather just die myself than have to live on alone. I know I deserve hell for all the things I've done… I just hope I haven't drug her down to my level._

Ruby shook the dark thoughts out of her head, and followed behind Weiss as she watched the blonde slowly pull out her hunting knife from one of her heavy coats many pockets. Weiss clutched the knife to her chest with both hands, resting the back of the blade against her collar-bone, as if she was afraid of the blade flying away if she let it go. And as they both stood side by side over the two dark blotches in the pure white snow, Ruby felt her heartstrings being pulled at.

It was a depressing sight, walking up to the two hounds, both lying on top of the snow while small droplets of blood leak from their wounds. Ruby's earlier guess had been right, the light beige terrier was obviously dead, and had probably passed some time ago. But what tugged Ruby's heartstrings was how the chocolate-brown dog was still trying to follow the approaching pair with her eyes, even if she could no longer move. They were both dead, even if one was still breathing. Weiss knelt next to the dog, running her hand through the dogs dull brown fur. A quick jab in between the eyes from Weiss ended the second dog's struggle.

"…" It looked like Weiss wanted to say something, but just couldn't get the words out of her mouth. Weiss avoided Ruby's eyes, and while she wasn't crying Ruby could tell she was on the verge. Nobody blinked five times in a second, and a layer of mist seemed to be wafting off the blonde's eyes.

"Well… would you be offended if I suggested the dog for dinner?" Ruby had lost all of her sense of tact long ago, and wasn't sure if that was stepping over some line Weiss had decided to make on the spot. Lately it seemed like Weiss got attached to every single thing she laid eyes on.

Weiss just shrugged her shoulders, and began walking away. Looking over her shoulder the blonde looked back at Ruby while answering with "I'll find firewood".

* * *

As the sun slowly descended behind the horizon, with the two friends staring at each other apathetically over the fire, the winter's chill finally began to set in. It wasn't snowing heavily anymore, although the snow was still thick enough that the melting ice surrounding their small cooking stove threatened the dryness of their kindling. Weiss might have to go search for more firewood if it continued on for much longer.

The dogs hadn't been too great a meal; as starved as they were, Ruby was sure they were more than three-quarters bone. Still, it had been months since either of the two had eaten something so fresh. Even they hadn't been able to get their hands on any good food while inside Caric, and had spent most of their rations eating pickled vegetables and old stale breads. Every once in a while they would cook and split an old bass or snapper they would buy at the market together. So the protein had left them both in a better mood than usual.

Ruby looked up to meet the heiress' gaze and reluctantly asked "do you want to put the fire out now or later?" Every minute the left the fire on, they risked attracting the attention of some threat, whether it be the wolves, the infected, or even other people. Ruby didn't want to bear the cold for another night, but she'd rather be miserable than dead.

Weiss just thought about that for a moment. Once the fire went out… well, the day was over. They didn't have watches or star maps to let them know when midnight had passed. So the arbitrary line they had been forced to make was just when the light died out and came back the next day. "Not yet… we still need to talk about Yang."

Weiss expected to hear an argument from Ruby… a sigh, a groan, a mutter of impatience. Instead, Ruby just continued to stare across the fire at Weiss, watching the light flicker off of the heiress' form.

Weiss was perched on top of a large boulder, looking down on Ruby who had sprawled out across the ground next to the fire. The redhead's body curled around the fire pit tightly, and she propped up her head with one hand while leaving the rest to lie on the frozen grass. Ruby had chosen to take the position so that she would be able to soak up as much of the fire's heat as possible before they had to extinguish their camp for the night. But the cold didn't bother Weiss. Even though she knew it wasn't true, Ruby sometimes wondered if Weiss could have just sat out in the freezing snow in the buff. She might not have not even given a shiver at the freezing temperatures.

Gazing up at Weiss, Ruby began to wonder if the legends and fairy tales she had heard as a child were true. She remembered as a child hearing Yang's mother tell them stories about magical snow elves and other such creatures choosing to live among humans. Weiss could have passed for one. Peering down from her platform, Weiss's face was hidden in shadows and only left her two pale blue eyes visible, one of which pointed down slightly as though it was weighed down by the old scar tissue. It reminded Ruby of the old masks she would see hanging in the neglected drama room at Beacon, one side smiling while the other in tears. The fire's light didn't do much to illuminate the rest of Weiss either, and turned the blonde's entire wardrobe to a golden orange hue. But the moon, at a phase where it was almost totally shattered, provided more than enough light behind the heiress through the tree branches to turn Weiss's hair to starlight.

But just because Ruby found Weiss's appearance beautiful didn't mean that she would give in to it.

Ruby stood up, and without looking at Weiss again began to kick snow onto the fire pit, extinguishing the largest of the flames under piles of snow.

"Hey!" Weiss stood up quickly, and jumped from her small ledge towards Ruby, intending to knock the redhead away from the fire. Instead she just flew through empty space as Ruby dodged the hurtling white object and twisted around the fire, continuing to extinguish the blaze from Weiss's side.

Weiss scrambled back onto her hands and knees from where she had landed in the snow, and twisted back around to look at Ruby and shout "RUBY STOP IT! WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS!"

Ruby didn't notice Weiss's shouts, and even if she did she ignored her partner's complaints. She now worked in a frenzy, as if somehow the fire being extinguished was similar to extinguishing her own pain that she had felt the entire day. As the light from the bonfire died down, so did the aching in her heart that Ruby didn't know how to deal with any longer.

Weiss wouldn't have it. Just before the fire was totally dead, she reached into the center of the pit and ripped out from under the snow one of the last branches that had still remained alight. The blonde shook the branch lightly, and as it received the air it needed to stay aflame, the embers flared back to life and blue patches of fire cast long shadows across Weiss's left half. She then twisted so that the blazing stick was protected behind her, where Ruby wouldn't be able to get at without going through the heiress first.

Ruby let out a long sigh, and then turned to Weiss and calmly mumbled "Weiss, put it down before you burn yourself."

"NO! NO RUBY, WE ARE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THIS! TODAY! AND WE ARE GOING TO DO IT WHILE IT IS STILL TODAY! AND I DON'T GIVE A RATS ASS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT! BECAUSE I DO!"

Ruby was stunned by the blonde's outburst. Not by the general content of the message, she heard an outburst like that from Weiss every few weeks. But what really froze the redhead was that Weiss had yelled…

"A rats ass?" Ruby actually began to laugh to herself quietly, although in the almost nonexistent light it looked as though she was merely shrugging her shoulders at Weiss. "I don't think I've heard you use that one before Princess."

"Shut it Ruby! I don't care why you feel as though you don't want to say sorry!"

"… Weiss, that branch is going to set you on fire in a minute… and as much as I think it would be a great laugh to see you run around in circles trying to put your hair out, I would prefer you just put the branch down."

"No, I know you. You'll just put it out as soon as you get the chance." Still, Ruby had a point, and Weiss jerked sharply when an ember fell off of the torch and landed on her exposed wrist. The branch probably only had a few minutes left of fuel before they were plunged back into total darkness and would have to keep this conversation up in the dark, which would be hard to do.

Ruby heaved a large sigh, and then said "I promise I won't."

"Then dig out the pit."

"Excuse me?"

Weiss yelped again as another ember fell off the upper branches and landed on her hand for the second time. Straightening up she looked back at Ruby and said "where do you expect me to put this down, and where did we already have firewood?"

Ruby just did as she was told, and soon the fire was alight again, although they had to keep feeding it with new kindling to keep the old flame alive against the moisture that had been added by the snow. Neither of the two sat down though, and they stared at each other across the fire, as the flames reached up to about their knees in between the two.

Ruby's face took in the light better than Weiss's did, she had to look down to meet the cold blue eyes that glared at her. Ruby's chin didn't jut out as much either, and left the majority of the light to make it up to her eyes. Ruby rolled her jaws for a few moments, as if she was getting ready to give some grand speech and needed to work up to it. But the red-head was only able to get out "I don't have anything to say Weiss. I'm sorry, but I just… don't."

"I don't believe that… you said plenty next to me this morning."

"Do you want me to say that again?"

"No… I don't want you to say anything like _that_." Weiss thought back to their conversation earlier that day, and it finally struck her what she had though was wrong about their exchange. "You said something along the lines of 'Yang wouldn't have a hard time guessing your thoughts if she actually wanted to'…"

"Yes…"Ruby answered with trepidation, bobbing her head up and down slightly to get the heiress to her point.

"You don't think she'd want to?"

Weiss received back from the redhead a hard "nope."

"Why not?! She was your sister Ruby; she cared about you more than anything else in the world, both before and after…"

Ruby turned sideways, as if looking at Weiss out of the corner of her eye somehow made it easier to talk. "We both know Yang held grudges. I'd be pretty pissed myself if I died just because you were sleeping and I didn't want to wake you…" As an afterthought Ruby sniffed "ruin your beauty sleep and what not."

"Wha… Ruby, she held grudges over crappy inconsequential things, like Juane spilling coffee on her shirt. You seriously think Yang would blame you for what happened?"

"I'd blame me Weiss. I'd blame me…" Ruby saw Weiss open her mouth, as though she was prepared to argue that point. Instead of letting the conversation continue on any longer, Ruby cut Weiss off and ended the pep talk. "Weiss, I've lived believing this for four…well no, I guess it's five years now. I don't think some magic pep talk you're going to give on the spot unprepared will give me any kind of epiphany".

And with that Ruby turned away and laid down on the ground against the fire again, trying to cover herself as best she could with a heavy snow blanket the redhead had swiped from the city before they left. She didn't even put out the fire.

Weiss felt like a failure. How could she have not seen this over the past five years? Anyone else would have… anyone better would have. As she felt a few single tears roll down her cheeks, Weiss began to curse herself. Would things be different if the blonde had noticed Ruby's guilt and headed it off before the regret could become an integral part of the redhead's personality?

Feeling utterly hopeless and worthless, Weiss covered the fire with just enough snow to reduce the flames to glowing embers, and took first watch with bloodshot eyes as she stared at the mistake she had allowed to form across the fire pit.

Across the first pit, Ruby laid down against the cold ground and miserably thought to herself _I deserve to be uncomfortable. I said we should go to Atlas. I got Blake killed. I was asleep and Yang went out on her own because of that. I got my own sister killed. And I've tortured Weiss over the past five years. I know she hate's me. I read the letters she's written, and I'm sure there are more I haven't found. _

Ruby scrunched up her face and clamped a hand over her mouth, trying to muffle the strangled gasps she was making so that Weiss wouldn't hear her actually cry. As Ruby felt a tear roll over her hand and onto the cold ground below her, the redhead was finally crushed by the weight of the world. Feeling those tears meant she had finally lost.

Neither of the two knew the other had cried through the night.

They both cried together.

They both cried apart.

* * *

**Thanks for reading, and I'll see you at the next chapter. I've left a lot of foreshadowing for what's to come. See you on the flip side!**


	4. The End Of All Things

Ruby sat rolling a small twig between her hands the next morning, feeling raw and emotionally drained. Ruby didn't know how long she had cried for, but she doubted it had been longer than a minute. But the fact that she cried was all that mattered. Looking across the fire, which Ruby had relight in the early morning twilight once the sun had started to rise, the redhead stared sadly at the curled up figure that was barely visible under the blanket across from her. Weiss was lying in the fetal position under the blanket, and Ruby knew that Weiss was just as torn up as she was. Ruby knew that Weiss only slept with her arms around her legs, tucking her chin in between her knees, when things were bad. So when Weiss suddenly rolled up and refused to make eye contact with Ruby, the redhead was struck with guilt as hard as though it was a lead weight in her stomach. Without saying a word to each other, Weiss and Ruby quickly cleaned up their camp, and walked off towards the sun, which was barely visible through the thick canopy overhead.

As the two passed through the forest, Ruby actually recognized where they had ended up. They had arrived at the entrance to Black Fall. Blake Fall was a mountain pass that connected the massive Forever Fall forest which surrounded Beacon, Signal, and the other cities on the eastern side of the pass with the rest of the country. Black Fall had once been a dangerous place, crawling with Grimm. It had at one point gotten so bad that traveling through the labyrinth of canyons carved out by fast-moving streams had been marked as off-limits. When there had still been electricity, a cart system had been used to just ferry people over one of the many mountain range's peaks.

But now, with all the Grimms long dead, Black Fall only represented a simple choice. Would they attempt to climb over the mountain, and chance the blistering cold winds one last time? Or would they risk getting lost in the labyrinth of subterranean caves that crisscrossed the entire mountain range?

Ruby pondered that question in her head, although she didn't dare ask it out loud. While Ruby was brash and tackles, she had at least learned to gage Weiss's mood. And it felt as though Ruby was walking next to a small black cloud of negativity. In truth, both of the two huntresses were in a foul mood. One because of her failure as a partner, and another because of the weakness she thought that she had succumbed to.

As the pair walked through the forest, the snow actually somewhat fluffy under their feet, Ruby decided to try to let her anger go. Weiss didn't deserve it, and she shouldn't receive backlash from trying to help Ruby.

Groaning internally, Ruby sighed '_this is not going to go well'. _Clearing her throat, Ruby asked "so… we've been traveling east. Great... but what now?"

Weiss just sniffed and shrugged her shoulders, her thoughts angrily lashing out at the redhead. _I don't care anymore Ruby. Just drag me wherever you see fit. It's all I'm good for anyway. I'm like some shitty paperweight you keep around just to keep yourself from fluttering off into the wind._

"Thanks for the help princess," Ruby called back sarcastically, hoping to rile up the heiress. Unfortunately, all that did was make Weiss hunch in on herself more. Weiss had always been short, but now it felt to Ruby as though the person standing next to her couldn't have been more than five feet tall.

Ruby just sighed, and began talking to herself more than to Weiss. "So… after we get to the other side of the mountain, we can either continue going east, and we'll probably run into the shoreline within the next three weeks. We'd be pretty close to Beacon at that point actually, probably only take another two weeks on foot to make it there if we followed the shoreline. Or… we could turn south from here, take a trip down to Signal. I'd like to visit my old home town, although that could take around three months unless we rushed". Ruby turned to Weiss, hoping to at least see some kind of opinion in her friends pale blue eyes. Unfortunately the icy orbs were pointed to the ground as Weiss kicked at a partly exposed branch from a long dead bush.

Heaving a heavy sigh, Ruby reached over and taped on the heiress' shoulder. "Heeeyah Weiss…"

"Hm…" was the only response the redhead received.

Silently fuming, Ruby tried to pull out her sweetest voice possible. "Hey Weiss, do you think this scratch on my arm looks bad?" Ruby groaned in her head, thinking to herself_ 'uhhh…. I sound as though I've become some ditzy prom queen_.'

It did the trick though, and with the sudden change in tone Weiss looked up from her branch, wondering what caused the change in the redhead's voice. She hadn't even registered what her partner had asked, only that Ruby didn't sound like Ruby.

As soon as Weiss's head lifted and turned towards the other woman, she felt the sting of Ruby's palm against her face. It wasn't a hard hit, and it did nothing more than leave her cheek slightly pink and with a small tingle. But Weiss had been raised to take offense to such an insult, even if the dozens of tutors and years of high society training lessons had been all for naught. Clutching at her cheek and taking a step back, Weiss yelled "What the hell is wrong with you Ruby!"

Ruby was just as pissed as Weiss was though, and began a mini-tirade, one that had built over the past month and had finally overflowed with last night. While she had dealt with some of them, the red-head was still overflowing with so many emotions that she didn't know how to deal with. Ruby knew it was one of her greatest character flaws, but she didn't like what she couldn't easily put in a drawer and close off from herself. So the redhead decided she just wanted them gone.

Grabbing the heiress by both of her shoulders, Ruby both shook and yelled at her partner. "PULL YOURSELF TO-FUCKING-GETHER WOMAN! I'M NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO HANDLE YOU JUST WALKING NEXT TO ME LIKE A ZOMBIE FOR THE REST OF THE MONTH!"

While she was yelling at Weiss, the redhead also shook the blonde, whose head whipped back and forth with the sudden motion. Around Weiss's neck hung a strand of pure white pebbles, and as they all clacked off of each other Ruby couldn't help but imagine one of the dried gourds that the citizens of vale used to make music with during their harvest festival. Still, that was a far off thought from what she was actually getting at. Shoving the blonde away lightly, Ruby finished her statement shouting "GET OVER THE THINGS THAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT! THEIR DONE! I REGRET WHAT I SAID, AND I DON'T WANT TO HAVE YOU REGRET THEM TOO. NOTHING HAS CHANGED, SO LET'S JUST MOVE ON!"

Ruby stood in the snow for the next few moments, breathing in deeply through her nose with the rest of her face scrunched up while trying to rake in her anger. It was annoying how hard it was to get her emotions back under wraps once she let them go. But as she felt her heartbeat slowly falling, she opened her eyes. And the second she did she felt an even harder slap across her own face.

"FUCK YOU RUBY! YOU ALWAYS TELL ME ABOUT HOW I'M NOT SUPPOSED TO...! HOW I'M JUST SUPPOSED TO..." Unable to finish either of the two sentences, although Ruby was able to guess what would have been there, Weiss just shoved her hands in her pockets while continuing to glare at the red-head. Pulling out her right hand and pointing it directly at the redhead's face, Weiss finished by yelling "YOU'RE JUST A MUCH OF A SELF LOATHING PIECE OF SHIT AS I AM! YOU'RE A HYPOCRITE RUBY! AND A FUCKING GOOD ONE FOR MAKING ME BELIEVE IN SOME FAKE PERSONA FOR THE PAST FIVE-FUCKING-YEARS!"

Ruby left her face pointing back towards their old camp site, her cheek turning bright red as she tried to reel in her rage again. It was a lot harder now that she had a legitimate reason to actually be pissed. _Oh boy Weiss, you have no idea how badly I want to bust that perfect nose of yours right now. I don't care if you won't talk to me for a month. You don't need it to keep…wait…_

Ruby would have kept going, even though she would never actually really hit Weiss, but something out of the corner of her eye caught the redhead's attention and stopped her train of thought. Directly behind them, back in the direction they had been walking from, Ruby caught sight of two colors that shouldn't have existed in the perfect white snowy landscape. Two colors that didn't belong to nature.

The first was pitch black, fringing the side of an old tree that the two had passed only a minute before. That could have just been some oddly formed shadow fringing the side of the oak, or a patch of dead lichen still hanging from its host like the parasite it was. But what sent ice through the redhead's system was the second color. There was no mistaking it, and there was no explaining it away.

It was the grayed steel of the barrel of a rifle.

Ruby lost all remnants of her anger in that one instant, instantly replaced by cold fear, and with both arms she grabbed her friends shoulders and shoved the blonde to the ground behind a raised rock ledge. If she hadn't seen the rifle by that total coincidence, they both would have probably been gunned down right then and there. The two were standing in between end of the forest and the beginning of one of the dozens of entrances to Black Fall, and were totally exposed against a wall.

Ruby succeeded in getting Weiss out of the way, and the rock ledge covered the heiress entirely from their enemies. But Ruby, being taller and forced to stay out in the open while she shoved Weiss down, wasn't so lucky. As she fell besides Weiss, the redhead landed on top of the ledge next to where the heiress had been shoved behind… completely exposed to whatever was coming their way.

Weiss, still thinking the two were having a huge fight, remained oblivious to what had set Ruby off. Instead she thought that the redhead had finally snapped, and had begun some vicious attack. As the blonde fell, and Ruby disappeared from sight for a quarter of a second, Weiss expected the redhead to suddenly appear over the ledge, either to attack her with words or with fists. She quickly understood her misjudgment when the blonde heard the loud crack of a rifle… and a scream of agony a second later from the redhead.

* * *

Weiss heard Ruby shriek "fucking hell!" and a second later Ruby rolled down into cover next to Weiss, landing with absolutely zero grace on her side half on top of the heiress. She quickly rolled off Weiss, who just gotten the wind knocked out of her by Ruby's shoulder slung rifle hitting her directly across the chest. Blocking out the pain, Ruby grabbed her rifle off of her back, and hunched down against the rocky outcropping they were hiding behind. She couldn't feel anything from her right leg except for an extreme burning sensation, as though from the knee down she was boiling in oil.

Weiss wasn't as level headed though. While she had regained some of her composure, Weiss still couldn't catch her breath. With the sudden shock the blonde had gone paler than even her porcelain white complexion should have allowed, and as she looked down at her partner's leg cold fear struck her to the core. The wound had mostly been covered up by Ruby's black cargo pants, but what was visible was a marbled mixture of red and white. The bullet had destroyed Ruby's kneecap, and had probably ripped open several of the veins leading to Ruby's lower leg. There was no way in hell that they were going to be able to run.

Ruby on the other hand hadn't given a second thought to her leg… she was already in combat mode, and had become completely oblivious to everything except what she could hear. Ruby had amazing hearing, close enough to rival Blake and her extra set of ears when the two had argued over whose was better, and already began planning out what she was going to do.

_I hear… at least two people coming at us from where we came from. One's directly in front of Weiss, and the other… ten feet to my right, both about fifty feet back._ _I know there is another one at the very top of the hill; I was shot by a rifle, and that is where I saw the muzzle….. And I hear something tearing up the snow all the way up at the top of the hill, where I saw that rifle barrel in the first place. I can't tell what that is though… maybe somebody dropped something next to their sniper and is scrounging around trying to pick it up?_

Ruby wasn't ready to fight, and Weiss wouldn't be useful until she actually knew where their attackers were. Weiss had never been a great shot, and she really had only ever used her pistol when she was forced. So Ruby did the only thing she could think of to stall. Start a conversation.

"Hey! Kind of underhanded attacking two unprepared women while they're having a heart to heart conversation isn't it!"

The pair both waited silently, praying that they would have a few more seconds to plan out a counter attack before they actually had to fight. Ruby had decided to make the guess that there were only three people there, although there could have been more that she was unaware of. But if Ruby wanted to think she could win the fight, she had to think their was a chance of winning.

Unfortunately Ruby's gambit didn't work.

Suddenly, from the very top of the hill where Ruby had heard the odd scraping noises, a distinctly male voice yelled "get em!" That was followed by the sound of multiple dogs suddenly howling for joy as they ran down the incline, ready to tear into either Ruby or Weiss.

Ruby disregarded all sense of self-preservation and got onto her one good knee, propping up her rifle on the ledge before her so that she was still mostly behind cover. Ruby saw eight dogs running down the incline, although she didn't take any time to double count. With three bullets she took down three hounds. And after a missed shot on a shorter one, Ruby quickly killed another two. Ruby felt a bullet whiz through her hair next to the left side of her face, although that didn't faze her. She stayed positioned in the exact same place, taking another shot at the dogs.

At this point the remaining three dogs were around half way down the incline, only seconds away from reaching the two of them.

"WEISS RUN" Ruby screamed, missing another shot as the dogs got closer and closer. Instead of following orders though, Weiss sat frozen, still staring at Ruby's leg. What was she supposed to do?

Her question was answered when Ruby shouted "get the fuck out of here!"

Without taking a second glance back, Weiss turned on a dime and flew at a full sprint into the mouth of the ravine, disappearing from sight in less than a second. Leaving her partner to defend a futile fight.

* * *

As the blonde ran at break neck speeds along the rock ledge that ran parallel to the river below her feet, she heard the sounds of several barking hounds still chasing her. Their howls were barely audible alongside the roar of the water and the sound of her own boots smacking against the rocky surface, although she had to assume that they all had decided to pick the white blur instead of the red bloodstain back at the gorge's entrance. _Good, at least now Ruby stands a chance._

Apparently the dogs had chosen a moving target, instead of finishing of Ruby. At least Weiss's conscience would be a little clearer for abandoning her partner. If Ruby died defending Weiss… well, the blonde didn't want to finish that thought. Ruby surviving was a guarantee. This was the redhead's world now. Ruby not surviving was an absolutely ludicrous thought.

The only reason Weiss had maintained a lead on the hounds, all of which were faster than she could ever hope to run, was due to her ability to jump and vault over all the large rock ledges in her way instead of running around them like the dogs were forced to do. She would have been caught and dragged down to the ground in the grips of the canine's jaws long before that otherwise.

Weiss's boots, not as snug a fit as she would have liked, caught on an exposed chunk of limestone as she ran down the ever thinning pathway. The blonde only stumbled for less than a quarter of a second, but it was still more than enough time for the closest dog to get the chance to jump for Weiss's face.

If the dog had aimed lower it would have succeeded. But in passing up the blonde's legs or torso for the chance to sick itself on her face, the Doberman left itself open while it soared though the air. A flash of silver, and a spray of blood following behind a second later, appeared as Weiss slashed out at the dog with her hunting knife.

Weiss didn't stop to see where she had struck. She didn't wait to finish the job. Without another glance, she continued hurtling down her steadily decreasing path. And the two remaining dogs jumped over their fallen pack mate and continued to give chase, unfazed by the Doberman's slashed throat.

* * *

Ruby shot another round, killing the fourth attacker she had seen attempting to make it down the mountain. Ruby couldn't feel relieved though as she pulled back the lever on the barrel and put a new bullet into the chamber. There were still more out there, Ruby just knew it. She still hadn't seen whoever had taken her leg out yet, and since she was wrong about her initial guess she assumed were there were more people in this group than that.

Ruby leg didn't hurt anymore, although instead dangerous numbness had consumed her entire lower leg and had begun to slowly creep up towards her mid-thigh.

The redhead's eyelids hung low, and it truly scared Ruby how tired she was. Adrenaline should have kicked her body into overdrive, and she should have felt as though she could run a marathon. Instead, as her pant leg grew warmer and the dark splotch in the snow grew, she couldn't help but feel as though she was drifting off.

_Pull yourself together! I can't stop now; Weiss is still running for her life!_

Ruby's eyes snapped open wider at that thought. She couldn't fail her friend yet. As long as she stood here, no one would be able to get past her to Weiss. So here she would stand, until she could no more.

Ruby had been right when she thought there had been more, and out of her periphery she saw the flutter of a coat in the wind as someone attempted to flank her in the tree's to her right. It was actually impressive how he had made down this far without being seen. But even more than that though, it was insulting how easily their group thought they would be able to take down the redhead. Apparently they hadn't heard any stories of the most dangerous person to walk across Vale since the beginning of the apocalypse… a small, unassuming redhead of 27, who would fight tooth and nail for Weiss.

He went down without much fuss, pierced through the rib cage by Ruby's last loaded bullet. As he went down, Ruby fumbled around through her dropped rucksack, trying to pull out the spare loaded clip she always kept on her person. As she felt her fingers find the smooth metal of the extra clip, she heard the sound of a pistol being cocked. It was directly behind her, in the opposite direction the last shooter had come at her from.

Ruby tried to swivel, to turn and at least do something in the face of her doom. But as she turned, she felt a hole be ripped through her right shoulder. Ruby dropped her rifle in pain, clutching at the wound with her other hand while her right shoulder burned with bone splintering pain. Spinning, landing on her ass with her back against the rock outcropping, Ruby looked up at cold, furious eyes.

As she saw a huge sniper rifle over the man's shoulder, she thought to herself: _Damn... there were six._

After that errant thought she felt a second and third bullet pierce her right rib cage, tearing her lung to shreds.

* * *

Weiss was in serious trouble. She was starting to run out of steam, although the adrenaline seemed to be keeping her going for now. After her third trip, Weiss's hands bloodied and her white jeans torn from the stumble, the two remaining dogs had caught up to less than five feet away from the blonde's coattails.

Still though, she continued sprinting across the stone path, hoping that something would give her an edge in a moment against however many dogs were still pursuing her. Weiss honestly had no clue how many there were; she had never taken the time to check. If the blonde had known there were only two, she might have decided to turn and fight. She could take two dogs. But as the eternal pessimist, a trait that had kept her alive multiple times in the past, Weiss assumed there were more than she could handle.

The roaring rapids were less than a foot underneath the ledge that Weiss was running across, and mist coming from the tumbling waves left the path slick and dangerous. Across the river, the opposite bank was above her head, somehow escaping the destructive lapping of the tides.

The blonde's heart sank as she looked ahead of her, and she saw that before the next turn in the gorge's bottom, about a half mile away, the ledge that Weiss was running on had been completely eroded into nonexistence by the constant pounding stream. Casting a look around, Weiss saw two options. The safest one, which Weiss completely rejected because of her incorrect assumption, would have been to just turn and face the two hounds still chasing her. Weiss had once been forced to take a fledgling Ursa bare handed; two starved dogs didn't stand a chance.

Instead Weiss's eyes landed on a small rocky outcropping a few hundred feet in front of her. Most of the stream was around ten feet across, but at that point, the stream narrowed to only six. Weiss knew that while she wasn't as fast as a the pack following her, she could definitely jump farther and higher.

Putting on a small burst of speed, using up the last dregs of her energy, Weiss sprinted faster than she had in years down the rock path, jumping onto the small rocky outcropping and from there to a smaller boulder that hung over the slick path. If Weiss had taken a moment to consider how slick a rock constantly getting hit by the mist from the rushing rapids would have been, she would have slowed down. Instead, Weiss forced out one last burst of speed.

With the burst of speed Weiss's boot skittered across the stone surface, and her left foot shot out from under her on the slick surface. Weiss lost all the momentum that would have carried her over the gap. She now fell, falling across the rift as her arms clawed at the air.

The blonde collided with rocky wall, a full body span lower than where she had planned on landing. Weiss's forehead smashed into the jutting out ledge, and the lights went out in the blonde's head instantly. She barely even felt herself fall into the frigid waters below.

* * *

Ruby stared up into the cold eyes of her killer, who had pulled down his face mask and begun screaming at her in rage. As the redhead held a hand over her chest wounds, she struggled to even breathe. She tried to look the man who would end her life in the eyes, although she didn't register a single word he said. It was probably some crap about how he would avenge the lives she had taken. Ruby's thoughts lashed out at him. If they hadn't even picked this fight nothing would have happened anyway.

Instead of the terror Ruby had expected to come with her death, Ruby just felt her eyelids grow heavy, and she was unable to keep them open any longer. As she slowly started to drift off into unconsciousness, Ruby's final thoughts were of Weiss. She knew they would be. In as close to loving as she could bring herself to go, she heard her internal voice complain: _Damn it Blondie, I knew you'd get me killed! If I die here and you didn't make it, I swear to god I'll haunt your ghost wherever it shows up!_

Ruby barely felt the strong blow across her face, as her attacker tried to get her to listen to him. He wanted the red-head to hear her killer's final curses before she was executed. _Sucks for you… I'll spite… you even… by dying. You… you… don't…you…_

And with that, as Ruby felt a few warm droplets of blood rain down on her face, the redhead's mind went totally dark, and all thoughts passed from her grasps.


	5. I Have Faith

**Quick note: this story has very different tone from all of my others so far. I personally think it really adds to the universe, but I thought about what people may want, and wrote it so that this story could be skipped. So if you don't want to get a smile from my 'parade of darkness' (someone was trying to be mean and called the story that, but I actually liked the phrase), then just keep moving on. This is more of a heartwarming chapter, and it doesn't contain anything a person would need to keep going forward in the story.**

* * *

"Hmmm… I wonder how that will turn out?" As a pair of deep purple eyes stared down on the watery scene playing out in front of her, she couldn't help but wonder if things would have ended up differently if she had been able to be down there with her sister and Weiss. Maybe if there had been three, the two loners wouldn't have been ambushed. For a few seconds she imagined herself standing next to Ruby and Weiss, squaring up to the bandits and facing them head on while her two teammates supplied her with backup. But shaking that image out of her head, knowing it would never be, Yang just joked to herself quietly while she watched Weiss.

_Bah… there's no point in mourning what could have been. I can't do much nowadays besides root from the sidelines and cheer them on. I wish I could even feel some remorse over everything they've gone through. Instead I'm just feeling jazzed about… well… everything._

It had taken some adjusting getting used to the whole weightlessness thing, being able to just float around wherever she pleased. And also being able to just appear wherever she wanted had been extremely disorienting. Yang remembered for the first few weeks she hadn't been able to hold herself anywhere for more than a few seconds before an errant thought carried her to the location of another one of the stray memories that her subconscious had suddenly conjured up.

Five years had given her some time to practice though, and Yang could now calmly follow from high above the earthbound blonde's path down the river as Weiss was whipped around by the rapids. Weiss's unconscious body somehow still appeared graceful in the grips of the waves, and while it may have been painful for Weiss to be tossed around in the waves, to Yang it looked as though her friend was performing some underwater ballet recital. Yang had always been jealous about the heiress's unconscious grace, up until the very end when she passed. Before she had seen herself in the memories of others after her death, Yang had always unconsciously seen herself as a big bumbling brute. She hadn't cared, but that was what she thought. She now knew she had always been just as lithe in her own way. But all of this thought brought something else into question: why was Yang even here watching Weiss?

Yang was fond of the heiress, even if to this day Weiss's uppity no good, goody two shoes attitude annoyed the blonde to no end, and truly felt pity for her old teammate's struggles. But Yang didn't consider her as important to her as someone else who was off a few miles in the distance. But for some reason Yang didn't want to keep hovering over her sister at this particular moment, in contrast to how she had hovered over Ruby's shoulder as she had been over the past five years. When the fight broke out, Yang for some reason decided to follow Weiss into the ravine instead of stick with her sister. And the golden ghost wasn't exactly sure why.

From both a million miles away, as well as directly in her ear, Yang heard a playful voice ask "so you would be okay with missing it?"

Yang smiled as she turned around in the air, momentarily taking her view off of Weiss. Hurtling towards her across the sky was a black shooting star, trailing streaks of purple and gold. And as it slowed to a stop next to her, Yang was momentarily blinded by black light. But it wasn't the darkness that a child would ever fear; it was the securing inkiness a person felt before they faded off to peaceful sleep.

Now hovering next to Yang stood her old flame Blake, still dressed in all black. Old habits die-hard. And even dying hadn't put a scratch in that particular trend.

"You're late!" While the outcry may have seemed furious to anyone else, they both knew better. Yang wasn't actually mad; she could never be mad at Blake. Instead Yang just raised an eyebrow at the other spirit, asking "and why is it that every time I see you… you look more and more like a cat?" It wasn't an overstatement. Blake really did look more feline than she had been a few hours ago when they had split off to do their own things for a few hours, now with much larger ears and sharper teeth, which the faunas couldn't have hidden behind her smiling lips even if she wanted to. Blake was still as beautiful as she had been in life, but in a more stylized way than before.

The raven haired girl just shrugged her shoulders and said "like I'm the only one here who's changed. Yesterday your hair was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay curlier than it is now. And where did the extra four inches of height you had on me go hmm?" After a second of thought, Blake hissed "also, I distinctly remember somebody saying they wanted some alone time last night... you wanted to mope and mourn or some shit?"

"Alright, alright… take a chill pill. Did you get up on the wrong side of the scratching post? You seemed fine last night..."

Waving off the innuendo, Blake just sighed "har har har… but still, we should go watch Ruby instead." Floating down gently, Blake came to a stop with her decent about a foot above Weiss's submerged form. Reaching out towards Weiss, attempting for the millionth time over the past seven years to touch her pale friend through the water, Blake's hand only passed like vapor through Weiss's cheek. Blake didn't know why her heart fell every time she failed to connect with either Ruby or Weiss, she would honestly be more surprised if it ever did work. Sighing and pulling back slightly, Blake muttered "Weiss is an A, there's no point in rooting for her."

Flying across the surface of the water to keep up with Weiss, Blake turned back over so she was parallel to the heiress and looking up at Yang, who had descended down to the bottom of the ravine with the two girls, although she was the only one of them still floating in an upright position. "Come on Yang, let's go."

"To be honest Blake…" Yang squirmed uncomfortably for a second before grumbling "I'd just rather not know until after the fact."

"What! Come on Yang, this is important! I was there when you di-" Blake's statement ended abruptly, already knowing that what she had said probably wasn't the best argument for why Yang should be there.

"Yeah, and I'm soooooo glad you were there for that! Even I don't remember anything from that night, and you have no idea how creepy it was when you were the one to explain to me how I died. It's even worse to think that you were there creeping on me the whole time!"

"Come on, it would be worse if I hadn't watched over you... wouldn't it? If it makes you feel any better he became an immediate D and died the next day that way too."

"It does but it doesn't. Still, I'd rather just find out in a month or too when Ruby either shows up or not."

Flipping over so that her bare feet now pointed towards Yang, although no gravity affected her black hair, Blake said "come on! Have some faith! You were a U also when you died, and you're here now!"

Yang thought about that for a second, passing through a tree branch as though it wasn't even there while she followed the two beneath her. A, U, and D. Accepted, Undetermined, and Denied.

Yang remembered a few of the conversations she'd had with older spirits, ones who had passed and moved into this bliss centuries ago. Up until around ten years ago, the rules for being a good person had always been pretty uniform. It didn't matter your race, religion, sexual preference (which was a good thing because that could have terminated all of team RWBY's chances right there in one fell swoop), political view, or lineage. All that mattered was if you were a decent human being. Literally all you had to do was not be a piece of shit… and you were in.

But around ten years ago, a few years before the world fell, the criteria changed slightly. Now it was more of a fluctuating line, and standards didn't seem to be the same for everyone. Murder didn't seem to stain your soul forever anymore, if you could justify it. Now it seemed as though a person could eventually work free of their guilt.

"Still, I didn't see if she was still a U when she got shot, I had left to follow Weiss before that. And Ruby has done a lot more…uh... things than I ever did. Are you telling me you aren't the least bit concerned for her?"

Blake just smiled up at Yang and went "Nope! I have-"

"Yeah yeah yeah, faith and all that mumbo jumbo. You've told me before".

Blake only laughed at being cut off by her wife. There would have been a time, before she had given up on all of her worries, when getting interrupted had been one of the most angering things in the world. Now she just found it amusing to see the usually boisterous soul in front of her fretting over something that Blake viewed as a trivial matter. "Yes Blake. Because I have faith."

"Well, I'm a little worried still; I probably will be for a while! We won't be able to catch up with her while she's jumping around all over the place, so I only way I'll be able to know if she's actually here is when she starts slowing down." The last part of Yang's sentence came out in a jumble, and she wasn't sure if Blake had gotten all of that.

A small smile tugged at the sides of Blake's lips, although she massaged her face to rub it out. With a wry smile Blake purred "Okay then, how about I give you some cold hard facts." Blake flipped herself over so that she was eye to eye with Yang again, and hooked her arm through the blonde's while keeping pace with Weiss's tumbling body. Weiss appeared to be breaking the surface just often enough to keep on being saved from the edge of drowning.

Without thinking about it, Yang nuzzled her face into the hollow of Blake's throat, immediately creating a giant mat of knots between the two of them. Blake started her carefully laid out argument, even if it was a waste of time. "So, I've talked to Summer, who's watched over Ruby her entire death-"

"Odd way of putting it" Yang interrupted, fighting off a smirk.

"-her entire death. And she told me that Ruby was an A for the entire period leading up to the end. Which is obvious. I can't imagine her ever having done something too bad while we were around…"

"Hey, you don't know, she might have robbed some bank that we aren't aware of" Yang joked. "Torchwick might have corrupted her while we weren't watching."

Again, a small smile pulled at the edges of Blake's lips. "She continued to be an A, up until that one incident… where she became a D."

Yang stiffened at the sound of her sister being denied. It wouldn't be fair, not in the blonde's eyes.

Blake just went on, pretending to not notice the change in Yang's posture. "From there, she spent a few months as a D, and then went to be a U. Record setting time for something... like... what she did. She stayed like that for two years, and then over the past three your sister went back to fluctuating back and forth between U and A."

Yang gave out a large sigh, her worry beginning to fade while next to the faunas. It was amazing how relaxing the afterlife had been for them. Yang remembered the first time she had run into Blake in this new world.

* * *

After a solid month of suddenly appearing and disappearing without any reason, or without any reason that could actually explain what was going on, Yang had assumed that she had gone mad. It made the most sense really. She went to sleep, dreading entering the old manufacturing factory the next day, and then was suddenly in Ruby's old apartment.

Waking up already standing in the center of the room, Yang whipped her head around while she took in the room. _Why am I here?_

Ruby hadn't lived in this apartment since she had finished schooling when she turned nineteen, two years ahead of the usual curve. She didn't want to be left behind by the rest of the group. And as soon as she got home from graduation, her landlord promptly kicked the unruly tenant out. Ruby had spent the few months leading up to the end dragging her feet looking for a new place while couch surfing at Weiss's, although her balcony apartment overlooking Beacon had never found a new tenant. After all the things Ruby had done in the apartment, it smelled so much like a garage that the odder still lingered after the three years of seclusion from the world. The room was ripped to shreds, although a few of the old schematic's still decorated the walls here and there.

For some reason the blonde started going weak in the knees, and she reached out to grab a table corner to steady herself. But when Yang reached out to grab the edge of the table, her hand flew through the wood instead of grabbing the corner like she had planned. But before Yang could be shocked by that, she was whisked off by her mind to her own apartment, which she had shared with Blake.

Over the next week, Yang jumped from place to place, never staying in the same spot for more than a few seconds. At first the blonde just thought it was some chaotic stress dream. But as the days went on, and Yang didn't feel herself waking up, she began to assume that she had either slipped into a coma, or had just gone bonkers.

As she ran out of memories to expose and review, Yang's chaotic path across all of Vale began to slow down. Yang began to spend more and more time in single places, eventually learning to tether herself to a single idea. She'd always lose control at some point and slip away though, maybe three or four minutes after she arrived. Sometimes she would notice the area grow dark right before she left, even if she was standing in the middle of the Forever Fall in the middle of the day.

But it finally happened, one day as Yang hung over Summer Rose's grave. Her aunt. Her sister's (through love if not by blood) mother. Yang had never met Ruby's mother. She hadn't even been here herself. The closest she had ever gotten was at the bottom of the road, where she had waited on her motorcycle with Weiss while Ruby gave her respects in peace. But now Yang found it interesting that she had never known where Ruby's favorite quote had come from. From an old, washed up poet.

_And Thus Kindly I Scatter._

"LAAAAAAAME" Yang groaned as she began to fade off again. Yang had always assumed that was Ruby's catchphrase because that was what her semblance did. It scattered rose petals everywhere. And seriously everywhere. Yang remembered back when they were kids, just after Ruby learned that she even had a semblance, her redheaded cousin would leave rose petals everywhere… just like how kids tracked in mud with their shoes. It was seriously annoying. Yang slid on them constantly, and had taken out a good number of her mother's favorite vases when she slipped on a pile of rose petals and would grab a countertop for balance.

A quarter second before she completely disappeared though, she saw a blur of black out of the side of her eye. And in the moment where she simultaneously hung above the grave, nowhere, and in her childhood bedroom, she felt a firm hand make a hasty grasp on her own. It was the first contact she had felt since she had begun her bought of insanity, at least the insanity Yang thought she had fallen into. And with the firm grip it felt as though she had, for the first time, been anchored to reality again.

"Finally" Yang heard a voice from behind her sigh. Turning around, Yang saw the mischievous smile of her girl, which she had missed terribly for two whole years. It struck a long silent chord within her when she heard a deep purring voice behind her joke "sometimes I seriously wonder if you're worth all the trouble I go through for you."

Yang's eyes misted over, but before she could open her mouth and say anything Yang felt herself being pulled off again, although for the first time the blonde couldn't tell where she was going to end up. It felt different begin brought somewhere instead of just appearing there. It felt more ominous, and she couldn't help but feel uncomfortable as she passed through total darkness while the world whipped by her. Blake seemed to know where she was going though, and without even thinking about it Yang tightened her grip on her partner, feeling the surrounding shadows beginning to fade.

When Yang opened her eyes, she saw that Blake had whisked her off to an old hill, which seemed both familiar and not. After a few seconds of silence Yang suddenly remembered the old school woods surrounding Beacon, and was terrified as she felt herself begin to fade away again. But after a half second she felt Blake's hand clamp down even tighter on her own, and that seemed to her hold her in place.

Swallowing loudly, using her voice in the first time since... however long this chaos had gone on for, Yang quipped lightly "while I'm really happy to see you Blake, could you let go of me for a second. My hand is getting kinda sweaty."

"Not a chance. I've chased you around for the past two weeks, and I'm not going to let you out of my sights again anytime soon." Blake ran her free hand through her hair, looking at the scenery in front of them. Yang hadn't seen Blake in two years, but even after all this time she knew that look on Blake's face. Blake was severely annoyed about something, and as the faunas looked around it seemed as though she was shooting the snow a glare, as if mad it was there in the first place.

"Uh huh… sure. So, come on, cat got your tongue? What's going on?"

Freezing for a half second, Blake turned to Yang and gave her the most withering look the faunas could manage. "Are you serious? You're the love of my life, my one and only soul mate, and that's the first thing you say to me? We dated for three years, I proposed to you, married you, widowed you, watched over you for the past two… and your first comment to me is a stupid pun?"

"Ouch Blake. And they call Weiss 'Ice Queen'. You loved my puns … also, the first thing I said to you was that I _was_ really happy to see you."

"Pfff… like that makes a difference. I'm sure that pun was the only thing on your tiny brain anyway..." Blake looked off to the side dejected, her extra set of ears flat against her head. "How did I get stuck with pun queen," the faunas mock complained.

Yang pulled Blake closer to her, ignoring her sweaty palm, and rested her head on top of the shorter faunas's. "I _really_ am happy to see you."

"...hm" was Blake's only reply, although she did lean into Yang's embrace.

"So, um... while this is great... what's going on? I mean, like, am I on some spirit walk or something?"

Blake chuckled slightly while answering elusively "you could say that."

"Come on Blake, I want to know. Am I going to wake up from this at some point? Or am I just having the greatest coma of all time?"

"Nope..." Blake answered again mysteriously.

"Nope to the coma, or nope to the waking up?" After a half second where Blake just smiled up at Yang slyly, obviously with no intent to answer, Yang was forced to start guessing. "Uh... am I tripping on some of those berries Weiss told us were edible? I told her they looked like a bad idea, but when she and Ruby ate them I couldn't be the only one to bitch out."

A small laugh came from Blake when she answered "while you were smart to think that, no. You remembered those berries from when I told you about the things that we faunas can't eat."

"You have any experience with them?"

"Yep. Worst. High. Ever. Nothing made any sense..." While Yang didn't hear all of what Blake mumbled, she did distinctly hear the phrase "giant pink rabbits", although she decided that was a topic to discuss for another day.

"Come on Blake! You know I'm horrible with guesses. Just tell me!"

Sighing heavily, Blake pulled herself away from Yang, although she still held onto the Blonde's hand. Turning her slightly so that Yang was facing a large gap in the trees, Blake leaned in and whispered into Yang's ear "does this place seem familiar?"

At first glance, Yang would have said no. She didn't remember dead trees, old rock ledges, or the icy still stream far off to her right. But as her imagination took over, her answer changed. Suddenly Yang saw the echos of white streamers between autumn red tree branches, rows upon rows of white chairs... and a pure white arch laced with yellow roses at the hilltop.

After a second of hesitation, Blake let go of Yang's hand and disappeared for a half second, reappearing where their arch had one been. "It didn't last as long as I wanted it to, but this is where my life took its biggest change. Bigger than when I left the white fang, even bigger than when I came to Beacon. And I may be assuming, but it's where yours did too. I don't care if it isn't the autumn wedding we spent months planning and roping all of our idiot friends into attending. I want our new life together to start here as well."

Yang was the emotional one out of the two, but it was strange hearing Blake's voice choking up while she felt fine. Realization finally dawned on her, although she wasn't sad in the slightest at the thought. Moving over to Blake and pulling her back in again, Yang breathed into the cat's hair with a heavy sigh "I'm dead aren't I?"

The blonde heard the faunas swallow loudly, and then answered back tentatively "yeah... you died one month ago today."

Instead of hearing sadness, anger, or resentment from Yang, Blake only heard in the blonde's usual upbeat tone "fill me in Blake. What did I miss?"

Blake cringed for a second, wondering how much Yang remembered from her last night. The faunas had talked to a few spirits, and she learned that if a person's death was too traumatic, they just wiped that day from their memories. Blake begged to differ, she still felt scarred from it, but apparently Blake's last day wasn't. Blake remembered her last day. She remembered her last minutes. She remembered feeling their teeth on her arms and legs, and feeling her throat burn as she screamed in pain while the monsters dragged her to the ground. And she remembered everything suddenly going black as she felt something bite through the back of her neck.

Blake sighed in relief when Yang answered "I don't remember anything that would make me thing I died. I just remember going to sleep and waking up... like this."

After around ten minutes of explaining, Yang was still taking things pretty well. She even cracked a few jokes at her own demise, although she did scowl when Blake explained how she did exactly die, even if it was in the most roundabout way possible. And after all that, instead of thinking about herself, Yang's first comment was "how have you been Blake? I know I missed you horribly over the past two years, but I wasn't alone. I'm sorry you were up here all by yourself."

"Nah... don't be. Not as a complement, but most of us didn't make it as long as you did. We're actually taking bets on who's going to live the longest." Pinching the bridge of her nose, Blake sighed "although now I owe Emerald a favor. That girl is mean though, I don't know what she's going to ask..."Blake hadn't been mad that she died first. She wasn't upset at being left behind. Instead, she was just overjoyed that she didn't lose Yang. While the faunas tried to not let it show, up until she knew Yang was here, the thought of her wife dying as a U and not knowing was horrifying. Separated for eternity would have been hell for Blake, no matter if she had already ended up in heaven. Blake said "paradise isn't paradise without somebody to share it with."

"So what? You're saying you're glad I kicked the bucket?!"

"Nah, I could have waited another few decades… it really hasn't felt that long. Really, time flies when you're having fun. But the only other person who I really can talk to up here is Velvet, and she still isn't that good at conversation."

"What?! Come on, I'm sure there are lots of people worth chatting it up with!"

Blake sighed "I guess, but most of them are either sour that somebody else made instead of them, or just spending their days doting on somebody still down there."

"But… isn't that what you were doing though?"

Giving Yang a withering look, Blake growled "zip it Goldy Locks. We've got a lot of time to catch up, and I don't want to bet sick of you within the first hour."

"How long do we have?"

Blake just smiled back and answered ominously "as long as we want."

* * *

Yang was pulled out of her reflective mood when she suddenly passed into shadows as the stream carried Weiss into a large cavern. The pair floated along silently, arm and arm, watching as their friend was still tossed around in the waves.

"So yeah, nothing to worry about. I have total faith she'll be fine."

"...but come on Blake. You're telling me you're not the least bit worried."

Blake's lips twitched silently again, although she still tried to play it off. "Nope, not at all."

Yang spun away from Blake, taking as intimidating a stance as she could while she was floating in the air. It was annoying not being able to stomp her feet, pound her fist against a wall, something to get her emotions across. "Alright cat... what gives? Why do you keep finding Ruby's death amusing? She was your best friend behind Weiss, and your sister-in-law to boot!"

"Tch" Blake hummed to herself for a few seconds, mulling over the different ways she could put her point. In the end she just sighed "but I just don't want to ruin it for you..."

If they could affect the world around them, the cave would have shaken when Yang screeched "WHAT?!"

Blake sighed and looked off into the distant recesses of the cave. Already, as they followed the current as it picked up speed, they had been carried far away from the mouth of the tunnel. But it wasn't dark inside of the caves. High above them, plastering along all the walls were luminous lichens, giving of soft green ambient light. It looked like a scene out of a fairy tale movie, and Blake half expected to see pixies dance out from behind the glowing stalactites.

"It's really pretty here... kind of sad nobody got to see this until we were all wiped out, isn't it?"

Yang paused for a second, putting aside what she was about to argue with her wife over. "If we had known something like this existed, we would have destroyed it by visiting so often." Yang reached out with a hand and brushed it through the spiky fungus, even if she felt nothing from the plant. "These are only beautiful because they were left in peace. It's better that we didn't know about these, otherwise every plant collector would have come along and destroyed these colonies to take a piece for their own collection, along with everything else that fell apart."

Blake made a deep grumbling sound in the base of her throat, as though she disagreed. Opening her mouth, Blake answered "that is one downer of a thought... I'd like to think we would have realized how these plants needed their distance to survive."

Yang was perplexed by this turn in the conversation. Wasn't Blake supposed to be the pessimist? How could their roles in the relationship change so drastically, and constantly be flipping back and forth? "Maybe we would have... but I doubt it. Anyway, what gives with how you're talking about Ru-"

"Hey Yang," Blake interrupted, suddenly scouring the waterway they had been floating over. "Where did Weiss go?"

Yang stiffened, not noticing how she had begun to neglect her living friend. Casting a look around, the blonde saw that the heiress was nowhere to be seen in the slightly calmer waters below them. Fluttering down, Yang actually flew under the water for a moment, choosing to stay perfectly dry, and tried to see if Weiss had gotten stuck in a crack in the river bed or on a bleached white piece of driftwood that had fallen this far down stream. Suddenly Yang felt Blake yank on her ankle, and coming out from the water she saw her wife point with a finger back a few hundred feet. On a bank in the river where the water flowed much slower, at a pebble beach that had been left untouched due to an eddy in the rivers flow, a shivering white shape dyes green by the light had drug itself onto shore. Even from this far away, it was obvious that the figure was trying to cough out a lot of water, and she hunched over and rocked back and forth while attempting to clear her lungs.

"Well, I guess she is going to be okay for now." Yang mumbled idly to herself,"... I wouldn't have guessed out of all of us Weiss be the last one standing."

Blake again smiled, and hummed "sure..."

"THAT'S IT! What are you not telling me Belladonna?!"

"Come on... you love surprises, don't you?"

Shaking her head and feeling her golden mane whip around her face, Yang answered "not today, not when the surprises are about my little sister. Just tell me!"

After a heavy sigh, exasperated that Yang couldn't even wait another five minutes, Blake quipped "I haven't agreed with you once on Ruby dying, have I?"

"...Blake, I'm more than attuned enough to Ruby to be able to feel when she gets hurt. She was shot. Badly. Her lung was shredded... there is no coming back from that."

With a mischievous smile, Blake leaned forward and closed her eyes. "You feel who else is really close by?"

Yang hadn't even thought to check for others nearby. Pushing out with her aura, which had grown so much more powerful in the last five years, Yang felt every living thing within a few mile radius. At first she was overwhelmed by the sheer number of animals and insects living on the mountain side and inside the caves. The blonde refined her search, excluding everything except for other people from the results. It was amazing how dark the landscape instantly became, just a blip off to their right where a heiress was still hacking up a lungful of ice water. And a few more miles out, on the very edge of Yang's sense, was Ruby's fading life. Only two lives over dozens of miles of territory.

Except... there was one more spark, so close to Ruby's that it almost masked the fading soul entirely. And while it took a moment to place, Yang finally remembered who it belonged to. "Seriously Blake? That's what makes you think that Ruby has a chance? He'd probably want to execute Ruby himself..."

"I have faith Yang... it's too much of a coincidence for it not to be."

"But even then... he couldn't do anything. His semblance would have been lost so long ago..."

Blake laughed lightly, grabbing Yang's hand and pulling her away from Weiss. Cupping the blondes face in her hands, Blake planted a loving kiss on Yang's lips. After a few seconds where neither of the two moved, Blake broke the contact off and began drifting away from her partner. Offering her hand outstretched, Blake repeated "I have faith Yang. If being dead has taught me anything, it's that coincidences don't happen. And these odds are just perfect for things to not go our way."

And with that, Blake returned to the shape of a black star, and swirled around the cave twice before shooting through a wall leading to the surface. A quarter of a second later, a beam of pure orange light followed its path perfectly. And as the two stars crossed the sky and took off for the moon, Yang heard Blake laugh back to her one last time "I have faith Yang."

Sighing heavily while following her soul mate up to the shattered moon, Yang grumbled "I guess I'll just have to have faith too then Blake."

* * *

**I really hope people like this story, because it was pretty easy to write. I also want to thank a Mr. LordMarc for the idea. When he originally asked for a story with Blake and Yang in this universe, I was kind of like "how the hell would I do that, I killed them off way before the start of this series". I like to think that I fulfilled my obligation whilst still coming out of left field. I read every comment on all of my stories, and I try to reply to most of them. If I don't it's because I didn't catch it within the first three or so days, and I feel as though the commenter has forgotten about me and my story by now. That or I just can't say anything without ruining something.**

**So yeah, follow and comment. While I do have a rough roadmap in my head of a beginning, middle and end (and I'm about half way between the beginning and the middle), it's flexible. And the end isn't a period point; it's more of an "I don't have anything planned out after this" point. I didn't plan on this chapter, so I might not have planned another good idea, if it doesn't interfere with what I already have planned. That and I do just love reading comments.**

**Last edit (11-1-14)**


	6. Don't Listen To Yourself

_This is a terrible way to die... drowned like a rat in ice water._

As Weiss felt herself get thrown back and forth in the rapids, her only emotion was a sense of melancholy for her fate. How could she let this happen? One moment in charge of her destiny, and the next completely at the whims of chance. As her body was slammed against a wall by the water, Weiss couldn't even guess whether she had hit the stream's bottom or one of the channel walls that had been carved out through centuries of the rapid's constant pounding. Weiss was so turned around by the rapids that she didn't even know which direction was up, although every few seconds she would feel one of her arms or a foot break through the water's surface and into the air. At some point the water surrounding her had become dark, and although every once in a while Weiss's head broke the surface of the water for a brief second for some air, she couldn't see anything when she did get above the rapids.

There was no sense of time within the rapids. The heiress could have been within the grips of the waves for anywhere between single seconds to full hours. All she could feel were tendrils of water pulling violently at her, causing her to continue to tumble head over heels in the waves.

At a particularly rough twist in the stream, Weiss felt her body get slammed into a submerged boulder. And a quarter of a second later, the heiress heard a resounding crack from somewhere inside her ribcage. At the pain Weiss involuntarily exhaled underwater, and she felt all of air inside of her lungs burst out of her lips and through her nose. Immediately Weiss missed the air that had been there only a moment before. It was odd how much she missed something she had taken for granted her entire life. It had always been there, like a friend that she had never valued. And now that it was gone, Weiss felt her lungs scream as they were filled with ice.

_There's no pride in dying this way. Even if I went out by my own hand, it would at least have been by my terms…_

For a moment Weiss felt her cheek scrap along what must have been the riverbed… or maybe it was the river's sidewall? Even so, Weiss was so cold that she could barely feel any of the dozens of screaming pain signals coming from her body. One addition made no difference.

Weiss was starting to feel light-headed as she continued her path down the stream, now staying totally submerged. It was actually more peaceful in this section of the stream... more relaxed. The water flowed a little slower here, and the heiress had stopped tumbling chaotically down the stream. Weiss only felt her back scraping against what she now knew was the riverbed. She knew it was the riverbed, because as the heiress was looking up at the tumbling surface of the water, she saw muted green lights above her. So it was night-time… or at least that was the assumption that Weiss's brain made. And that of all things was what drove Weiss into action.

_Oh my god… if the stars are green… how dirty is this water!? I'm… I am NOT dying in this cesspool, where the stars look fucking green!_

While it was a great thought, one that would have driven her to action any other day, Weiss's body didn't respond in the slightest to her brain's orders. Oxygen deprived and beaten half to death by the rocky path, Weiss's limbs simply lacked the energy to move. The blonde screamed at her own body again, her fury at the situation boiling over into pure rage.

_Move! I don't care if the name means nothing anymore! I am a fucking Schnee! I will not die in some waste pool like this!_

Again though, nothing changed. All Weiss felt was the back of her winter coat getting caught on a few of the rockier portions of the channel bottom. A few times the fabric got caught for a few seconds before the nylon would snap and she would be released back into the grips of the waves again. And as Weiss's rage began to seep away, it was replaced by cold, bitter sadness.

_Ah… no hope in hell for me anyway. Maybe this is what my name is worth? Just a nameless death, for a nameless player. I probably could have just been called Female Schnee Two, and been just as useful._

As she began to give up hope, Weiss didn't even register when her boots dragged across gravel. When her face broke the surface of the stream for a slight second a moment later though, it sent a shock through her fading mind. Weiss's body, moments before insolent, now seemed to react to her brains signals again. But Weiss was conflicted in sending them.

_It's always been this way… whenever I want to succeed, I can't. And whenever I give up, I'm just given what I need to keep on... enduring? Yeah, enduring. I've always won just because somebody else was there to keep me from falling into last place. A series of lucky chances given to me by others. My sister, taking the fall for me so I wouldn't have to immediately marry somebody else for the good of the company and leave Beacon when I was nineteen. Or getting paired with Ruby. While I never admitted it, I would have quit the whole huntress thing out of anger at least a dozen times over if she hadn't made me stay. I used to think all the petty squabbling by our classmates was beneath someone like me, even though I was no better. And then she spends the last seven years protecting me while I couldn't do the same for her. _

_I'm... I'm so sorry Ruby. I got you killed, because I was as useless and weak as always. __I didn't want that to be what my life was worth… I never wanted to just be a burden for others and rely on pure chance to be saved…_

But subconsciously, even if her oxygen deprived brain couldn't get the words out itself, Weiss did want to live. Because she craved what she had been taught to chase since her childhood. She craved the thing the heiress felt she had been denied her entire life. Weiss wanted control. If she was going to die, it would be at her terms. So as an arm involuntarily shot out and desperately clawed at the gravel that had coated the bottom of the riverbed, Weiss's body moved on its own and crawled up a slope where the blonde could see foam lapping against a rocky shore.

As Weiss's weighed down body desperately crawled its way up the incline, she felt herself once again be pulled at by the rapids. But the blonde was out of the worst of the rapid's influence, and try as it might the water couldn't drag her any farther back into the stream. With one last surge forward, just as her body was about to give up again for the final time, Weiss broke through the water's surface and pulled herself onto shore.

Now surrounded by air, Weiss tried to take in the biggest lung full that she could. But she couldn't. The space was already taken up by frigid water. Still half in-half out of the stream, Weiss began to cough violently, feeling the water shoot out of her lungs through her mouth and nose. It was actually quite painful, and as air began to find its way into her lungs, the space inside her chest seemed to burn as it was forced to do its job again.

Even after all the water was gone, Weiss was still crouched over coughing violently, her forehead pushing against the pebble shore while her back arched in the air. It actually hurt to just breathe in and out, and Weiss began to wonder if she had made the correct choice. What if she had fought so hard to live, just to die for some odd reason on the shore? Maybe there was a point where you just couldn't come back from drowning, even if you were able to breathe again. Weiss's oxygen deprived brain began to step outside of the realms of science, and began making wild guess's at what was killing her. _Maybe the water gets into your blood, and it's going to just drown me from the inside even though my lungs are clear._

It was a ludicrous thought though, and as Weiss felt tears streaming from her eyes up over her temples from all of her hacking and coughing, she slowly began to regain some semblance of composure. While her lungs still hurt like hell, they weren't screaming out in pain like they had been moments before. Now her breath was more of a raspy rattle, and after a few seconds of groaning the heiress got to her feet and slowly trudged the extra foot out of the calf high water and onto the shore.

Now on her feet, and out of the water, Weiss cast a look around. Looking down on herself, still not entirely clear minded, the blonde grumbled at her appearance. Her pure white outfit, drenched with water and weighing her body down, had been stained green by whatever had been in that putrid stream. It wasn't until Weiss tried to wipe at her jacket with her right hand, and saw her hand was colored green as well that the heiress looked around.

Weiss hadn't turned green, and looking back in the stream, Weiss now understood that the water was most likely sparklingly clean. As she looked up Weiss saw dozens upon dozens of stalactites, many of them larger than she was, hanging from the ceiling of the cave that she had washed ashore in. And coating the stalactites were thousands of colonies of glowing green moss. Those had been the constellations that Weiss had thought she was seeing. Individually they didn't provide much light, but through sheer numbers the colonies gave off a strong green glow throughout the entire cave.

The lichen supplied more than enough light to see by, and Weiss took in the area she had washed ashore in. The cavern was a perfect circle three hundred meters across, with a small lake in the center of the circle taking up the majority of the cave's floor. One side of the cavern had the stream that Weiss must have come from flowing out of a small tunnel and directly into the small lake. And on the other a larger river, almost three times as big as the fast-moving stream, flowed lazily on out of the cavern into a large tunnel. The bank that Weiss was standing on hugged this edge of the river and continued on into the second tunnel.

As Weiss stood there, admiring the view, her sense of pain suddenly kicked into gear. And it hit the blonde hard, as though a sledge-hammer suddenly swung forward and hit her in the gut. Stumbling slightly from the sudden shock, Weiss finally took in the aggravated screams her nerves had sent her. The first message was an overwhelming sense of cold, as though she was freezing in her own clothes. Which she probably was. And second was pain. The pain pretty much covered her entire body, as the blonde had been smashed up badly by the abusive rapids. But the two main points that hurt the most were Weiss's left hand and the right side of her rib cage. Remembering from her survival classes at Beacon, Weiss decided to deal with the cold first.

Weiss knew she had to get out of her soaked clothes, which were leaching off her body heat. Throwing her pack off to the side, which had miraculously somehow hung onto the crook of the heiress' arm, Weiss began to get out of her clothes as fast as she possibly could. The blonde's frozen fingers fumbled with her jacket, quickly shrugging off her soaked nylon jacket and the heavy knit sweater she wore underneath that. Moving her left hand through the sleeves while she took the clothing off was painful, although Weiss knew it was better to take the situation one step at a time. Using only one hand she then ripped off her feet the waterlogged boots and socks that were freezing her toes. If they had any feeling in them, it probably would have been painful to walk across the pebble shore. She then pulled off her belt and pushed her pants, which had always been a size too big, down her legs.

Stepping out of her pants, now left in only her undergarments, Weiss decided she had done enough. Her teachers would have scolded her for worrying about modesty in a moment like this, while her life was hanging on warming up. While it was probably irrational, Weiss didn't want to disrobe completely, even if she was without a doubt sure that she was alone. Besides, Weiss already felt slightly warmer now that she was out of the soaking clothes, even if she was now standing in the frigid air. One problem down.

Now came the moment of truth. Taking a hasty breath, Weiss looked down at her hand. Her breath caught it her throat, because while she was relieved to not see any bone sticking out, the sight was still pretty grim. At some point, Weiss must have smashed her hand in the tumbling waves against a rock wall. Because while her thumb, pointer and little fingers were fine, both her middle and ring fingers bent at the second joint away from her pointer finger. Weiss's ring finger actually crossed over her pinky finger, and the two mangled digits had both turned an angry red color.

Weiss had never reset a finger before, but the heiress knew she couldn't just leave them like that. She really didn't know what she was doing; Ruby was the one who had actually ever learned about first aid. Taking a guess at what she should do though, the heiress just grabbed her middle finger and violently tried to yank it back into place. Weiss heard a pop sound, which she guessed was a good thing, although the digit still hurt just as much if not more than it had a moment ago. She then repeated the process with her ring finger, which was less successful. Weiss didn't hear any pop like she had with her middle digit, and even after she tried twice the finger still pointed off at a slight angle. But it wasn't anywhere near as extreme as it had been a moment ago, and for now Weiss's patch job would have to do.

The rest of the pain was just something that Weiss would have to live with. Weiss had broken ribs before while out on assignments, and from that experience the heiress was pretty confident in saying that she had cracked at least three. She couldn't do anything if there was any internal damage, so the blonde just decided to not worry about it and hope for the best.

Already feeling sore, Weiss hobbled over to her discarded bag, which she had dropped by the edge of the stream. Leaning down and grabbing the handle on her pack, Weiss realized something was wrong when she felt almost no resistance as she lifted the bag.

"…Fuck me" Weiss groaned as she turned the bag over and shook it wildly, hoping for something to fall out. Other than a few drops of water, the bag was totally empty. At some point through the tumbling of the rapids, the pack must have opened and released everything into the stream's waves. There was absolutely nothing inside the bag except for an old pocket sewing kit, one that she had only used once or twice over the past few years. Weiss had lost everything.

Throwing the bag at the cavern' s wall in rage, Weiss began to curse her fate. _So great, I'm fucking underground, stuck with nothing, and I'm still freezing cold and wet! This has been a great fucking day!_

Still though, Weiss couldn't just stand there and do nothing. Looking down at the rocks at her feet, Weiss's mind began to wander, and before she knew why the blonde began to think of the old kid shows she would watch when nobody else was around. Sure the heiress had been way too old for them, but Weiss hadn't cared. They were simple and to the point, with no twists and no cliffhangers. Just garbage that was easy to rot her brain on. And in the back of her mind Weiss remembered one of her favorite characters, an old western cowboy, had used a pair of rocks to light a stick of dynamite in the show.

Picking up the two closest to her feet, two dull brown oval rocks, Weiss tried to smash the two against each other to create a spark. Nothing. After a few tries, where she tried to orient the rocks in different ways, Weiss dropped the two and sighed. _These won't work… what about those over there?_

Over the next ten minutes, Weiss limped back and forth across the rocky bank on the balls of her feet, trying to find rocks that would actually work. She'd pick up a pair, strike them off of each other a few times, and drop them and move on if they failed her. Finally Weiss found a set that seemed to work: a pair of silvery gray stones that at least gave off sparks when she scraped them against each other.

Limping back to where her pack had landed against the wall, Weiss decided there was no better kindling in the room than the moss itself. Reaching up with her good hand, and feeling her abused muscles ache at the motion, Weiss ripped down a stretch of moss as long as she was tall and at least half as wide. Folding it over a few times, Weiss threw the bundle unceremoniously on the ground and attempted to set it on fire with her new stones.

It took almost ten minutes to get the stupid fire going, and even when Weiss succeeded it was only a small reddish-brown glow in the center of the bundle. Weiss threw another mass of lichen on top of the flame, hoping to grow the fire, and sat down against the wall of the cavern. Without warning the fire suddenly flared into life, and while it gave off the most acrid smell Weiss had ever ran into, it did provide more than enough heat, and soon Weiss was no longer shivering from the cold.

_At least there is that… now what am I going to do? _

But the day's events had left the blonde both low in spirits and moral, so Weiss just sighed to herself internally and mumbled out loud "I'll just deal with whatever comes in the morning…" And with that, Weiss curled up with her arms around her knees, and laid down next to the fire. Lying on the rocks wasn't comfortable, but she was so exhausted that she had no trouble drifting off into a light slumber.

* * *

"Ah… Ow… Fucking hell…" Weiss groaned as she pushed herself of the ground with one arm, feeling all of her muscles scream as she used them to reposition herself. Apparently the resting time Weiss had given her body had allowed it to realize how beat to hell she was. As if she already couldn't tell.

At some point the fire had gone out in the… night? There was no way to tell time here, there weren't any paths to the surface that Weiss could see, and no light coming in through cracks in the wall. For all Weiss knew it could have been the middle of the day. Now in her old pit, a few embers glowed dully in the center of a black scorch mark.

Weiss pushed herself off the ground, and felt even more cries in agony from her legs as she stood up. Her neck cracked as she looked around for some more moss to burn. It was a kind of sad though, as she lit up her side of the cave, it became darker and darker as the glowing moss no longer covered her corner of the cavern. Still though, she needed the warmth and light more than ever. Reaching up again, and feeling her shoulder burn in protest, Weiss ripped down a few large patches of moss from the wall and threw them on top of the embers, hoping that they would catch fire without her needing to do any work.

Weiss slowly crouched down next to the fire, wincing as her knees and ankles sent her needly messages of pain. But as she sat down, she saw that instead of lighting the new moss ablaze, her new kindling had simply smothered the embers out. A single tendril of smoke spiraled upwards out of the pile of green moss as the ashes lost their flame. Weiss grabbed her two flint stones in anger and tried to strike up a new flame, missing the stones as much as she actually got them to connect and strike off of each other.

While she sat there, Weiss thought to herself on the predicament she had gotten herself into. Working on autopilot, the blonde swung the stones at each other, missing as much as she actually connected while Weiss stewed over the situation. _Well, this is great. I can barely stand, I'm stuck underground in the middle of the mountain, and I've got no supplies… and... and I'm all alone…_

Before Weiss could dwell on that final thought though, a fire suddenly kicked into gear in front of her. And by the light, Weiss could see how badly bruised she was. She had at one time joked with Ruby on how easily she bruised, and had been compared to a banana by Yang multiple times in the past. But now, looking down at the dozens of purple splotches on her arms and legs, Weiss silently cursed everything from bad genes to her stupid inability to tan. Tan people didn't bruise as badly, or at least she had never seen a tan person receive as obvious a bruise. And some of Weiss's bruises were very apparent, such as the large fist sized blotch on Weiss's right side that ran from the bottom of her ribcage upwards. As Weiss looked at the bruise, she explored the wound with her fingers, and pressed down in a few spots. While it hurt to touch, at least the ribs stayed in place and didn't shift under her fingers.

Weiss didn't want to dwell, as there wasn't anything positive to think about, so she just walked over to where she had dropped all of her clothes and pulled them off the floor. They weren't heavy like they had been when she first left the water, but they were still damp and filled with moisture from the piles she had just left them in. Pulling them over to the fire, Weiss laid out all of her clothes on the opposite side of the pit, hoping to dry out her gear quickly. And as she laid out each piece of clothing, Weiss did inventory on all of her possessions.

Really, there wasn't much good news with her search. Sure she still had her clothes, but she was missing pretty much everything else. Weiss's pistol wasn't among the pile, and neither was her hunting knife. And every one of the blondes pockets were empty, save for a wadded up hunk of papers that Weiss identified as being her journal pages. The ink had all ran together, and the paper was almost unreadable. They could have been salvaged and dried out though, if Weiss took the time to save her diary pages.

Weiss Began to gently pull apart the pages, until a line from the letter caught her eye. "I don't feel as though I'm living... I'm just putting off my death". _More of my defeatist attitude, huh?__ Well, I didn't need these anyway… they haven't done me any good._ With a dispassionate flick of the wrist, Weiss threw the wet paper into the fire, and heard a few pops as the waterlogged paper's moisture evaporated in the heat.

Sitting back down again Weiss just stared into the fire while she waited for her clothes to dry. She really just wanted to put her shoes back on, so that she could walk around on the beach without feeling the pebbles dig into the bottoms of her feet. But that would take time, and with nothing better to do, Weiss leaned her head back and tried to fall asleep once again. It was a lot easier than she thought it would be.

* * *

When Weiss awoke again, the fire was still going, although it would probably run out of fuel again in the next few minutes. She still felt just as sore, and as she pulled herself up the cavern wall by divots in the stone, Weiss could barely keep herself standing. But she couldn't let herself fall, and after a moment to get herself together, Weiss straightened out to her full height and walked over to where her clothes had been laid out.

At least they were all dry, and as the blonde pulled on her winter clothes, she thought to herself what she could do next. Going back the way she came wouldn't be an option, as Weiss wouldn't be able to swim up such a strong current back to the surface. So she really had only two choices: stay and die... or move forward.

_Ruby would hate me if I gave up now... after all we struggled through... but it would be so easy..._

Fully clothed again, Weiss shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and turned away from her campsite, already dreading the next leg of her grueling journey. What if the path was a dead-end? What if she ran into obstacles she couldn't overcome alone?

_How can I go by myself? I'll probably just die somewhere... trapped at a dead-end... lost in the dark..._

Weiss shook her head, chasing those worries from her mind. The river had to let out somewhere, and that somewhere had to be better than here.

_I can't know that... It will be quiet again, even quieter than with Ruby... I __just _can't go on by myself anymore...

But Weiss shut that inner voice down, and tried to lock it away, as deep as she could. As Weiss walked towards the large tunnel entrance, leaving the small semicircle of light that she had rested in behind, the blonde also tried to leave behind all of her doubt and fear. She wanted to leave behind her self-loathing, her self-doubt, her pessimism, everything negative that had brought her life to this point. Everything she now blamed for all the bad thing that had happened in her life. It was an irrational thought, but the more she pondered on it, the more Weiss realized she could draw back every mishap in her life to those emotions. They were anchors that Weiss had clung to. And she was sick of them.

_It would be so easy to stop... I could just sit by the fire and daydream what time I have left away..._

As the blonde traded the warm light of the fire for the soft cool glow of the tunnel moss, Weiss angrily mumbled to herself "I'm not allowed to quit anymore. Ruby may have given it to me, but it's my fate now, and it's mine to control."

_I'm making a mistake... I'll just torment myself before I actually die starving at the bottom of a pit..._

Now yelling, hearing her own voice reverberate off of the tunnel walls, Weiss angrily stated to the air "Ruby died for me." The realization hit her hard after she yelled it out and heard herself say it back a moment later. And any other day it would have destroyed the heiress to hear that. Any other Weiss would have been destroyed. But instead, all that cruel reality did was solidify her resolve. "Ruby died for me! And I am NOT wasting her sacrifice!"

Quieter this time, now that she was outside of the circle of campfire light, Weiss kept on talking to herself. "Yang blamed herself for what happened to Blake. Ruby blamed herself for what happened to Yang. I blame myself for what happened to Ruby…. But I'm not going to live like Ruby did. And I won't be like I was before. I have to keep going now, because Ruby would hate me if I quit now...like I always have before."

And with that, without any weapons or supplies, Weiss strode out of the cavern and into the tunnel, leading herself deeper and deeper into the bowels of the mountain.

* * *

**Alright, so… if parts of this seem a bit repetitive, that's because I wrote about half of this before the last chapter, and about half of it after. So that's why Weiss drowning was in both. But, way more detail here! Which you may not like… but hopefully you do though.**

**So yeah, follow the story and comment, I always want constructive criticism or to hear any readers opinion. Thanks again, and I'll be updating soon!**

**(Last update 11-1-14)**


	7. Hostile Savior

Two figures walked down the narrow valley path, being careful to not slip into the gurgling rapids below their feet. A single false step would end either one of them, especially while the harsh winds were whipping past them through the ravine, pulling on their clothes and trying to knock them off-balance. The taller figure in front leisurely strolled ahead of the other, not waiting for his limping companion to catch up. He cleared the path of debris while his partner lagged behind, and playfully kicked the corpse of a Doberman into the hissing waters below.

A pair of grey eyes followed the hound's corpse as it sailed through the air and landed with a splash in the black waters below. "So Weiss at least fought back... she can't have just died here..."

A snort came from the hooded figure in front of her, who looked back at Ruby over the scarf wrapped around his face. Only his coal black eyes were visible as he glared back at Ruby, snapping "you're reaching Red. I've told you over and over she's dead. I came looking myself after I found you; thought I'd get the gang back together. Nothin when I looked then, and nothin while we're looking now. Your little girlfriend probably just dragged the other two mutts in with her when she fell into the river."

Ruby wasn't convinced though. Weiss had to be alive; it didn't make any sense for the blonde to die. At least not yet, not while Ruby still felt a sense of purpose. No... Weiss was alive, somewhere. She just had to be.

Behind her Ruby heard her savior, who was still being a real jackass, joking to himself "Dumbest blonde I ever met, she even takes the cake from your dumb bimbo of a sister... literally, she could have taken any other path, and would have been perfectly fine. Takes a real moron to find the only dead end in the entire mountain range. Instead sh-!"

He would have kept on going, but at that point Ruby swirled around, ignoring the flair of pain in her knee, and brought her steel toed boot up right in between his legs.

His eyes almost bulging out of his sockets, he fell to the ground, safe from the path's edge. And as he fell to the ground Ruby stumbled too, landing on her hands and knees. In the quick motion, Ruby had felt something tear inside her, deep in her chest. Ruby coughed into her palm, ignoring the groans coming from the figure in the fetal position in front of her. After the few second long hacking fit, Ruby pulled her hand away to see it covered in crimson speckles. Glaring over at the figure lying on his side, the redhead growled "First off, you say anything like that about Yang or Weiss again, and your ass is going in this river." Straightening to her full height, she looked down at the crouched over finger and held her palm out towards him. "And second, you did a really shitty patch job."

Now rolling on his back, still cradling his injured pride, he glared daggers at the redhead through teary eyes and wheezed "fuck you." At the end, as though it was a separate thought, he added through gritted teeth "... bitch!"

Ruby sighed, taking in the scene before her again. How could she have traded Weiss for this dumbass. In the few short hours she had been walking with the living again, how could everything have fallen apart this badly? Thinking back on everyone she had known, Ruby actually wondered if there was anyone on the planet she would have wanted to have been saved by less.

Anyone at all...

* * *

"Finally you're awake… you've been pissing me off how much you sleep. Come on, get up."

As Ruby opened her eyes and stared up at flickering shadows across a dusty ceiling, she didn't wonder why she was on a cold, stony floor. She didn't question why out of the corner of her eye she could see a rosy fire crackling away merrily. Instead she was wondering how she could be seeing anything. Hadn't she died?

"Come on bitch! I heard you shift; I know you're kickin' it again." Ruby felt a slight nudge on the side of her head as something hard and cold taped against her temple. "You can actually be useful and help me redo your dressings. It's a pain in the ass to do them while you're lying on the ground and I'm forced to work underneath you."

Shifting her neck slightly Ruby looked over in the direction of the voice, which was distinctly male… and somehow vaguely familiar. Originally just out of her line of sight, now hovering over her, a familiar face peered down from a rock ledge above her. One that mixed a playful grin and an angry scowl quite well. After a few seconds, where the face smiled at Ruby crookedly while she stared back dully, the old memories suddenly clicked. When Ruby finally placed the face, instead of smiling back she involuntarily scrambled away and tried to reach into her back pocket where she usually kept her spare knife.

As she moved, she saw the perched figure above her leap down at her, a heavy winter coat fluttering in the air as he shot through the space separating the two. Just as her hand slid off her chest and to her side Ruby felt half of her fingers get pinned under a boot, and looked up to see a gun barrel being pointed down at her face.

"I didn't waste all that time and energy I spent healing you to have you go ripping open all of your wounds. If you did something like that… well, I wouldn't heal you again."

"Long time no see, Mercury" Ruby spat up at the figure leering over her, who had aimed the bottom of his boot at her face.

"Good to see you to Red" the silver-haired villain called back. After a second where the two starred each other down, creating a tension so thick it was almost palpable, Mercury made the decision to step off Ruby's hand. Slowly walking backwards away from Ruby, being careful to not take his eyes off of her for a second, he sat down close to her level on an overturned log by the crackling fireplace. As he walked, his shoes made an audible shnick-shnick sound as the gun barrels on each of his shoes clicked against the hard shale floor. Sitting back down on top of his wooden throne, Mercury put his hands behind his head and leered down at the redhead, sneering "I'd like a thank you when you find your manners... bitch."

Sitting up slowly, feeling a slight throbbing coming from her chest, leg and shoulder, Ruby looked around the area that she had woke up in. Ruby could tell that she was in some kind of cave, and looking out to her right Ruby could still see snow clinging to the ground a dozen or so feet out at the mouth of the tunnel. The sky was a deep purple, and she could see the light given off by the moon lighting up the clouds in the sky, even if the brunette couldn't see the moon itself. Off a bit to her right, Ruby saw all of her possessions, minus the rifle, piled up against the cave's wall.

Watching Mercury out of the side of her eye while she sat up, Ruby got the strongest feeling of déjà vu. Sure Mercury was older, probably in his early thirties now, but he really looked the same as when she had last seen him almost eight years ago. Dressed in all black, except for a pair of silver gloves and old grey boots, Mercury looked fit and lean in his winter gear. And he was strangely clean-shaven, without even five o'clock shadow on his face.

Looking down at herself, Ruby saw that under the thin fleece blanket she had been resting under, Ruby's entire torso had been covered in white gauze. And from the itching Ruby felt around her knee, Ruby could guess that her leg was wrapped just as thoroughly. "How am I fine?"

"You're not," Mercury snapped back. Bringing his ankle onto his knee and resting his chin on his palm, he stared Ruby down as though she was a difficult math problem. "I'm out of practice, and while I covered up your wounds and reworked most of your arteries so that your leg wouldn't shrivel, I didn't do much else. You stretch too much, or at all really, and you're going to rip all _my_ _hard work_ to shreds."

While anyone else would have been intimidated by Mercury's presence, Ruby saw through his thin attempt at bravado almost instantly. He was overdoing the macho act, and it was easy to see how twitchy Mercury was. Although there really wasn't much reason to be worried; Ruby still felt like death, and if Mercury wanted her dead, he wouldn't have much of a fight on his hands.

Still, Ruby was a little stunned, how he made it sound as though pulling someone back from the brink of death was something that should have been done more efficiently. "Wait... how did you even-"

Cut off by an impatient gesture from Mercury, Ruby received back the growling answer "you don't remember why Cinder kept me around for as long as she did, do you?"

"Uh... you had a healing semblance, didn't you?"

After a short snort, Mercury sneered "a_ healing semblance?!_ Red, I'm insulted that you would knock me down that low". Rolling his shoulders as though he was prepping to give some grand speech, Mercury looked down his nose at her with a twisted smile and sneered "I was, and still am, the world's best field medic. Ever." Mercury paused for a second, before adding as a side note "at least... at least before everything went to shit. I healed the entire white fang army, over a hundred, single-handedly during that last skirmish we fought in before the world fell apart."

Groaning at the memory, Ruby sighed "uh… I remember that day. I thought we were done, when you suddenly roll up with Neo and pick everyone up off the floor".

"It was harder than I made it look, I passed out after that," Mercury commented with a small smile, as though reliving the old war stories warmed his heart.

"Who fucking cares if you passed out? We had you!" Ruby covered her face with her hands and groaned again, even louder than before. "It was twenty verses two hundred, and we-"

"One hundred and eighty six" Mercury cut in, although Ruby continued on as though she didn't hear him.

"And we won! We only had one casualty… and bless his soul" Ruby added sarcastically, "but nobody cared about Dove! Even Cardin wasn't fazed by it! We had you guys!" Throwing her hands up in the air in frustration, Ruby glared at Mercury and growled "then **you** show up and forced us to retreat! God damn it Mercury! You ruined everything!"

"Yeah, like you weren't a constant thorn in my side either. You gave me so many headaches back when we were still going strong, you and your team's shock tactics on our bases were a pain in the ass to deal with."

Now it was Ruby's turn to stare down Mercury. "If I was such a pain, why did you even bother saving me then? I was dead, and so was..." Suddenly Ruby's mind froze in its tracks. _Holy shit, how could I forget about Weiss!_ Without even finishing her sentence, Ruby began whipping her head around, looking for Weiss behind some rock ledge or tree stump. Her stiff neck creaked loudly at the sudden movement as she whipped her head around, looking for some sign of her partner.

With a raised eyebrow Mercury asked "looking for the girlfriend?"

"Where is she?" While Ruby's voice sounded no more animated than when she had complained about the lost battle only moments before, in truth she was reeling internally. She had to be here. She had to be okay. The brunette couldn't comprehend the idea of Weiss not being so. "Where is Weiss?"

Mercury twisted his neck, and after a dull popping noise he answered absentmindedly "dead."

Ruby felt as though she had been electrocuted. After a half second, where she stared dumbly at Mercury, the brunette flared back to life, angrily yelling "Weiss is not dead!"

"Well Red, she ain't walking among the living anymore!" Mercury sighed dully as he continued on, saying "she's finished, gone, finito! She played her last song, bit the bullet, took a plane to vegas, yada yada, you get my point."

Pushing herself off the hard shale floor to her feet, Ruby stumbled for a few seconds as the blood rushed out of her head and left her feeling light-headed and dizzy. Ruby couldn't remember feeling this stiff in a long time. Interrupting Mercury's tirade of analogies, the brunette asked "how long was I out for?"

"Well, by the angles and trajectories of the sun, stars and the moon…" Mercury began joking, although he trailed off when he caught the murderous look on Ruby's face. Swallowing loudly, Mercury answered in a more level voice "three days, give or take a few hours."

Ruby nodded absentmindedly, cursing her bad luck. _Sure I should be thankful to be alive… but damn, three days gives Weiss a big lead on me._ Walking over to where she saw part of her possessions piled high against the wall, Ruby leaned down and grabbed her heavy black winter coat. Pulling her bad arm through the sleeve, the brunette stopped for a second as she felt her thumb get caught in a hole over the right sleeve.

A train of thought just crossed Ruby's mind, something obscene and mildly disturbing. Looking down at herself, and at the bandaging around her midsection, Ruby realized that her clothes hadn't disappeared on their own. And while anything that she would have wanted to keep covered was either covered by the gauze or her underwear, she wasn't wearing anything else.

Wheeling around with fire in her eyes, intent on laying waste to Mercury, she shrieked "you fucking pervert!"

Started to the point of jumping a full foot off of his stump and landing on the cave floor, Mercury reacted badly and gave her a shaky smile in response to the brunette's shriek. With eyes so wide they looked as though they would fall out of his head he asked in a shaky, joking voice "excusez-moi?"

"I should kill you right now for even touching me!"

The only emotion on Mercury's face was confusion, and as he looked up at the stormy gray eyes contemplating murder, he slowly repeated "touching…?" A quarter of a second later though, his eyes narrowed to slits as he finally caught on to her meaning. "Are you seriously that vain?"

His only response was a simple, venomous "I'll fucking kill you!"

Angrily, both surprised and insulted, Mercury spat back at Ruby "You seriously think I'd even want to … Well, sorry to disappoint you Red, but the idea of raping a malnourished, unconscious patient is a serious turnoff for me. Maybe try again later, and I might be interested."

"I'll fucking-!"

"Ruby!" Mercury yelled, forcing the brunette to pause for a moment. With a cold stare, Mercury added sharply "I'm not interested."

Ruby gave a snort, still contemplating murder. But something about how obviously offended, and brutally honest, Mercury was made Ruby believe he was being straight with her. So she angrily shoved her arms through her jacket sleeves, and hurried to finish dressing.

Once she was fully clothed, she turned and walked out of the cave, not taking a second to look back. She only gave a tiny sigh when she heard metal clicking off of the stone floor as her ward followed her out into the night.

* * *

"Alright Red, so what are you gonna do now?"

Ruby didn't like walking next to Mercury on the side of the gorge, where he could shove her in the frigid waters bellow at a single moment's notice. Taking a few quick steps, ignoring the flare of pain from her leg, Ruby cut in front of her annoying shadow so that she was now in front of Mercury and walk with her arm sliding across the cavern wall. Raising a hand over her shoulder as though to wave him off, Ruby replied back sarcastically "which is it Mercury? Am I going to be the Bitch, Ruby, or Red? I'm getting whiplash with all the different names you're throwing at me."

Playfully running a hand through his hair, pulling up next to Ruby, he answered "I think I'll be flipping back and forth between the set; keep you on your toes… anyway, that's not an answer. What next?"

Ruby didn't hear his question though; she was too lost in thought._ He's walking right next to me. I should push him in, before he realizes I could kill him right now. If I kicked him, he wouldn't be able to grab me before I was out of his reach. I need to get rid of him before-_

"Starship Red: do you copy! Hellooooooooooooo! The hell is up with you?!"

Ruby grimaced, realizing that as they stepped out of the chasm, she missed her chance. _I'll get more. I need to get rid of him sooner or later. If I can lose him, great. But now, while I can't outrun him, killing him is probably my only option._

Mercury snapped his fingers in front of the brunette's face, angrily asking "you bit? You're walking around half-dazed like a clicker. I'm starting to worry you'll turn and jump on me any second!"

Not telling Mercury how close he was to guessing Ruby's thoughts, she snapped back "what?!"

"What are you doing now? Your little friend is dead; I'm curious what the next move for the great 'Ruby Rose' is going to be." Mercury began biting his nails while looking up at the night sky, and over his left thumb he mumbled "I'm guessing you were heading to Beacon from here… that or the coastline, maybe?"

Ignoring his guesses, Ruby replied flatly "Weiss isn't dead."

Mercury froze mid step, and Ruby continued walking forward for another few seconds before she notice his stopping. Turning back to look at him, Ruby saw Mercury's face plastered with a look lost somewhere between infuriated and flabbergasted. Stuttering angrily, Mercury stumbled over his jumbled words angrily as he said "w-w-we came all the way HERE, in the middle of the freaking night! Just so you could double-check me and look for yourself! Even after I told you everything already back in the cave! We didn't see a single trace of her!"

Whirling away from Mercury, Ruby's eyes squinted as the moon suddenly moved out from behind a cloud and shone brightly down on her. Momentarily blinded by the sudden light, she angrily stared up at the sky while hissing "so I'll just keep looking then!"

Ruby heard a sound of contempt behind her, although she didn't turn back to see whatever judgmental look Mercury was wearing now. Trudging off angrily, the brunette weaved through the tree's following her earlier tracks through the snow as she worked her way back to the cave.

Finishing the nails on his left hand, and transitioning over to his right, Mercury simply scoffed lightly at the limping figure ahead of him, adding under his breath as Ruby walked away "how did you make it this long if you're that hopeful?"

* * *

Walking back into the cave, whose fire was still going strong, Ruby quickly grabbed her pack off of the ground and threw it over her good shoulder. Bouncing it off her back, Ruby noticed that the bag didn't feel any lighter than usual. Ether that, or the brunette was much weaker than she had been before she had gotten hurt. A quarter of a second later, she heard the sound of Mercury entering the cave behind her as the clicking that usually followed him resonated off the walls.

"How does all that clacking not give you a headache" Ruby asked sourly, her already foul mood even more damped by her bleak prospects at finding her partner.

"What, this?" As Mercury asked, he tapped his heel against the floor, smiling lightly as he did so. "I think of it more as a built-in metronome. Closest thing to an iPod any of us are going to find around here."

"Hmph" Ruby scoffed, finding no amusement in his answer.

Rolling his eyes, Mercury quipped lightly "are those the only sounds you can make! Groans and grunts! Sheesh, lighten up!" Doing a quick dance, Mercury then joked "I can do a wicked tap-dance in these baby's… if you're at all interested?"

Turning on her heel, squaring up to the smiling Mercury as best she could, Ruby put on her most menacing expression. Holding out her palm face up, the brunette simply growled "rifle."

That wiped the smile from Mercury's face instantly, and he stopped for a moment while gauging the face of the brunette in front of her. Ruby thought that she was going to have to fight him for it, and was getting ready to argue with him when he said "behind that ledge over there." He then nodded over to the back corner of the cave, just at the fringe of the lights reach.

Ruby watched him wearily as she strode past her old silver-haired enemy, and just as she exited the light from the fire, the brunette felt her foot connect with something dense and wooden. After a few seconds of scrounging around on the ground, Ruby felt her fingers curl around the worn leather strap of her trusty rifle. And while she always made fun of herself for it, the brunette would be lying if she said the world didn't feel any more bleak when she didn't have her weapon at her side. It had been the same with Crescent Rose, and after all these years, Ruby couldn't say that her unnamed rifle was any less special to her.

Ruby didn't turn around while she picked up her rifle, feeling it hang on its shoulder strap as she straightened up. Because as she began to straighten out, Ruby realized that Mercury had sent her back against a wall, in a corner with nothing to hide behind and nothing to take cover with. She might as well have placed herself in front of the business end of a firing squad. Her mind racing while she stood at the edge of the light, Ruby started freaking out over her situation.

_I'm a fool for asking for this now! Mercury isn't an idiot; he set this up, and he's been waiting to see if I turn on him the second I get my hands on a weapon. My rifle probably isn't even loaded; he wouldn't be stupid enough to give me a loaded rifle. He just wants to see what I'll do with a weapon. I should just turn around slowly, holding it by the strap, and thank him. I'll get a thousand chances later. Or… maybe I should take the chance? He might have waited for me to be armed before taking me out. He strikes me as the honorable type, although they usually don't make it this long. I should kill him now! But what if I'm wrong and this isn't loaded! Then I'll just be a sitting duck with nothing better than a club to take him on with. But if he is going to… ARGH! There's no way out of this!_

Turning around slowly while her mind was still reeling, deciding to hold the strap of her rifle away from her body, Ruby turned back to try to thank Mercury. And when Ruby turned to face Mercury, she saw him sitting cross-legged by the fire with his back towards her. He threw another log into the dying blaze while calling back "I'll take first watch!"

Staring at the figure hovering over the fire dumbfounded, Ruby said to herself "he _is_ an idiot…"

* * *

As quietly as she could manage sneaking out with a limp, Ruby shuffled out into the early morning sunlight and away from the cave's mouth. She felt as though she had repaid every one of her debts to Mercury by standing watch over him throughout the night after his shift had ended. She had waited the few hours leading up to dawn, mulling over her choices. As soon as Mercury had fallen asleep the night before, disappearing behind a crevice in the cave that wasn't easy to see, Ruby had checked her rifle. Fully loaded, even with a bullet in the chamber. It was only because of that simply fact, that utterly stupid sign of trust, that the brunette had decided to sneak out at the break of dawn instead of ending his life while he was sleeping.

Ruby quietly began walking towards the tree line, and as she limped away, she couldn't help but feel bad about how she had treated Mercury last night. He had shown no sign of wanting to hurt Ruby, but had instead wasted precious resources trying to save her. And all she had done was plan out killing him all night long, over and over, until she could just run for the hills without him.

Just as she turned around a corner and past the first tree on the fringe of the forest, Ruby had a mini heart attack as a sly voice from her right quipped "hey Red."

"Gah!" As Ruby leapt away from the sound, her pack went flying off of her back and landed in the shallow snow.

"Sheeeeesh, aren't you jumpy" Mercury quipped lightly, half hidden by shadows while leaning against the very same tree that Ruby had walked by while entering the forest!"

"Wha… where… how…" Ruby asked, unable to form a full thought.

"I take walks in the mornings; helps to stay fresh" Mercury lied smoothly, guessing what Ruby was trying to ask. Leaning down and picking up a light grey pack that was sitting in the snow next to his feet, Mercury slung the bag over his shoulder while asking nonchalantly "so, where are we heading?"

"We?! What makes you think I'd want you around?"

Raising an eyebrow, Mercury responded back "my rugged good looks, obviously."

Growling angrily, Ruby stalked off past him, not taking the time to look behind her. Ruby knew without any confirmation that he would follow. "You better not be hoping for some grand adventure, we're going wherever I say, and I don't care what you think!"

Mercury just chuckled lightly as he followed behind her, laughing to himself while saying "I've got nowhere better to be."

* * *

**Last edited : 11-1-14 (although almost nothing was changed)**


	8. Keep Moving Forward, Just Look First

After four days in the dark, Weiss's eyes had adjusted to the constant gloom that accompanied the dark cramped tunnels she had traveled through. The only source of light for Weiss was the glowing moss that stuck to the tunnel walls, hanging low over the stream like drapes and catching the mist that wafted up from the choppy waters. Those colonies and the occasional moss fire she would make when she wanted to cook a meal.

Singing to herself in her head, Weiss kept her hands in her pockets while kicking along a small, circular puck shaped rock she had found earlier. _Mirror Mirror, Tell Me Something… Who's The Loneliest Of- Damnit… _Weiss cursed to herself when the rock that she had been kicking along skipped oddly off the floor, and bounced from her path into the stream running along her right.

"Uhhhh…" Weiss groaned. She could see her rock right there, right on the edge of the water, only a foot below the surface. But something about having to get her hand wet annoyed the blonde, so after a second where she shot daggers at the stream, an inanimate object, she turned and kept walking down the tunnel.

Rolling her shoulder, glad she wasn't as stiff as she had been when she first started walking, the blonde thought to herself on the past four days. Weiss wasn't actually sure how long she had spent underground though. She just guessed it had been four days; the blonde really couldn't be sure. Weiss felt as though she had slept in increments that would add up to four days. But with nothing to do other than just meander down long tunnels, Weiss wasn't sure if she was getting tired out slower than she usually would if she had just walked at Ruby's pace.

Walking through the tunnels, for lack of a better term, was boring. It was mind numbingly boring. Weiss thought to herself at least once a day '_once you see one stalagmite, you've seen them all. Same goes for moss, no matter how it grows.'_ Originally Weiss had been afraid of getting lost. She knew better now. Since she had entered the tunnel back at the bank where she had washed up, Weiss hadn't seen a single deviation in her path. All she did was walk in the direction the river besides her flowed… and walk.

And walk. And walk.

Weiss had found ways of keeping herself entertained though. She had picked up little knick knacks on her march through the mountain; the oddly shaped rock here, the weird piece of driftwood there. She had nothing to keep in her pack anyways, and Weiss figured the there was no reason to leave it empty. Weiss's favorite trinket she had found along the subterranean trail though, by far, was shoved through a loop on her belt.

It was stupid, but when Weiss had found the long stick, bleached white by however long it had spent in the absence of sunlight, stuck in a crook in the rocks where it was barely poking out of the rushing rapids, Weiss saw the resemblance instantly. Pulling it out of the water while being careful to not scratch the wooden poles surface, Weiss already felt nostalgic. The meter long rod, already the perfect size, even had a pair of knots in the wood right where the pommel and the hilt would have been, although the grip was a little thicker than Myrtenaster's should have been. After scratching M. V. II into the grip where she held the toy sword with a fingernail, Weiss smiled to herself and continued walking along, happily humming to herself over her find.

_I should get rid of this thing, it's just dead weight_ Weiss told herself after she found it. But even as she said that, Weiss knew she wouldn't. While the blonde walked along the beach, which had shifted from large shale slabs to tiny granite pebbles Weiss practiced her fencing against imaginary foes, the makeshift sword kept her entertained against the constant monotony of trudging forward.

It was a good thing that she didn't throw away the stick, because the toy actually proved to be somewhat useful to Weiss. After a few minutes where Weiss had to get the feel of the lighter staff, the blonde sharpened the end of the stick to a reasonably sharp point. Being a master fencer, Weiss found it easy as possible to single out and stab fish out of the shallow waters along the stream. The fish were bland, small, and tasted absolutely horrible after Weiss cooked them in the moss fire on little sticks the blonde made into spits that she had found along the bank. But they kept her fed.

Sitting cross-legged in front of a new moss fire, Weiss watched as the second fish she had caught cooked over the fire in the acrid smelling flames. Picking at her teeth with a finger nail, knowing she would be absolutely appalled by her behavior if someone saw her doing that, Weiss wondered if she would actually eat the second fish she had caught, or save it for later. Weiss was battling between her intense hunger and her sense of disgust. The last fish Weiss had eaten definitely tasted horrible, but the three-inch long fish didn't do much to fill even someone as small as Weiss up. But Weiss wasn't sure if she would be able to even keep another one of those rotten little bottom feeders down, the way her stomach was tossing.

Guessing that the fish was done after its scales had turned from their original whitish yellow to brownish red, Weiss pulled the spit out of her fire and stared at the fish for a few seconds. _Well… If I feel hungry, it's because I need more food._ And against her own better judgement, Weiss bit off a small chunk from the fish and unhappily ate as much of the meat as she could, groaning to herself silently as she felt slimy bits of bottom feeder slide down her throat and land in her stomach like rocks.

Finished and left with only a skeleton and a fish head on her wooden spike, Weiss looked the dead fish in the eye for a second before flicking the entire spit back into the stream on her right. Watching dispassionately as the skeleton of her meal floated down the stream and was carried out of sight, Weiss sighed and lied down while putting her hands behind her neck.

_Maybe I'll find my way out tomorrow…_Weiss thought silently as she slowly drifted off into a light slumber.

* * *

Waking up again, only the cool green light visible, Weiss picked herself up off the cave floor and started her march again. She didn't feel need to check her fire; Weiss wouldn't care if she lit this whole mountain range on fire, as long as she wasn't caught in the blaze. But after the thought of running from a blazing inferno as the fire burned the colonies of moss clinging to the wall crossed through her mind, Weiss back tracked to her old fire and made sure that her old campsite was indeed put out.

"Better safe than sorry" Weiss mumbled to herself as she kicked the blacked heap of ashes into the river, watching as the crumbled strands of lichen dissolved in the water and left swirling trails of ash to drift down the stream.

Turning back around and continuing her marathon, Weiss imagines slaying Grimms and enemy huntsmen with her toy sword as she heard her boots crunch against the pebble beach she had been walking along. She may have looked like a fool to anyone watching, but to Weiss, the blonde was proud of defeating three beowolves and an ursa singlehandedly. Twirling the spear in her hands like a baton, Weiss thought to herself _I feel more like Pyrrha than myself with this thing…_

Still, that wasn't too bad a comparison. Weiss had always respected Pyrrha's ability, although the blonde also joked to herself that the champion's tastes in men left something to be desired. But Pyrrha had been another individual at the top of the food chain at Beacon, almost coming close to herself and-

"Nope… not going down that road yet" Weiss muttered out loud, already knowing where that train of thought would leave her stranded at. Over the past however many days she had spent stranded in the dark, Weiss had learned to avoid that topic. Sure she had been strong, brave and full of resolve while she was marching towards her doom on the night she had woken up, but that phase had passed quickly. After her judgment wasn't so mind numbingly clouded by pain, the blonde found that every time she thought of… a certain individual, she was immobilized by guilt. The last time she thought of her old partner, Weiss had been stuck rooted to the spot for a good ten minutes. And in the end, she didn't even come to some sort of terms with the event. No, the blonde just shook her head as though she had been stung by a bee, and stumbled along down the path at a faster pace. So Weiss just kept walking, away from what had led her here in the first place.

If Weiss had been taller, traveling through the tunnels would have been really inconvenient. Even at her short height, Weiss often had to walk with her head down while she was making progress through the tunnels. Anyone taller would have had to walk with their knees bent awkwardly while they made the trek.

After a few hours of walking, where the tunnel continued to go on its perfectly straight path, Weiss couldn't take it anymore.

"Uh… this is so boring!" Weiss complained to herself as she walked along, running her hands through her long hair in frustration. Playing with her staff had lost all of its appeal after her victory over the beowolves, and her imagination couldn't think up a better scenario than that on her own. Weiss simply wasn't that creative.

At first, Weiss thought she heard some weird scratching noise as she pulled at her hair, thinking that she might have scratched her scalp with her long fingernails. But when the noise continued even after Weiss stopped, the blonde's eyes lit up as she realized something. She heard a deep rumbling up ahead, the sound of water hitting air. If she heard water hitting the air, that meant that the river she had been following for the past few days had finally ended. And if it had ended, that meant it had finally let out somewhere.

Picking up the pace, Weiss started to rush forward towards the sound at a brisk jog. At first the sound was only a slight rumble, and as Weiss rushed towards the sound she felt the air almost humming from the sound. After a few hundred feet though, the rumble had switched to be more of a crashing thunder, and Weiss could feel the ground beneath her feet shaking. Weiss could see the tunnel opening up, and towards the end, which was covered in drapes of moss, it looked as though there was actual…

"Sunlight" Weiss sighed happily as she began to run forward, unable to see anything other than patches of yellow light through the hanging drapes of green that blocked the end of the tunnel. Without slowing down, Weiss swept the drapes away with a hand and moved out of her tunnel with a smile on her face, happy to finally be out of that cramped passageway. And when Weiss stepped through the glowing curtain, she found herself hanging in the air over what must have been at least a hundred foot drop.

"DUST!" Without even thinking, Weiss flailed her arms out, attempting to grab anything to keep herself from falling. Her hand caught on a particularly thick piece of lichen, which she had only just swept back. Falling a few feet, Weiss felt her body slam into the slick wall below her tunnels drop off as she hung from the piece of moss by one hand. Using all of her upper body strength, Weiss tried pulling herself up and back into the tunnel she had just fallen out of by her one free hand, the other still clinging to the moss. Once she got a strong hold, Weiss pulled herself up to the cliff and into the tunnel, rolling herself back in.

Lying on her back and panting from the rush of adrenaline she had just gotten, Weiss scolded herself._ I'm an idiot, I knew that there as a waterfall up ahead. That was lucky, and I should have died from that… _Rolling over and getting on her hands and knees, Weiss looked over the edge of the cliff, this time being careful not to fall off.

When Weiss leaned over the edge and peered through the veil of moss, her heart sank. Weiss had assumed the sunlight she had seen was actual outdoors, and that she was finally out of the mountain. Instead, looking down at the hundred something foot drop, Weiss just saw more cave. Looking up at the ceiling, Weiss could see dozens of cracks in the top of the caverns ceiling, letting in forked cracks of light. Through one Weiss could actually see the sun, hanging high in the sky against a perfect blue background.

Looking down though, Weiss had to tackle her next biggest issue. The massive cavern Weiss had found herself hanging over reminded the blonde of the cave that she had first landed herself in. But this cave was much larger. Almost five hundred feet across and with a large, semicircular pool against the wall that Weiss was hanging out from, the bottom of the cave was dotted with dozens of small caves and even more tunnels, leading who knows where. Three different waterfalls, all pouring out of the walls at different heights, fed into the pool at the bottom of the pit.

Looking down from her perch, Weiss weighed her options. _I can't go back; it'll take me three days to get back to that other pit… plus I'll have just wasted my time going in a circle. But the only thing stupider than not watching where you're going is to leap into water that might only be two feet deep._ Looking at the sides of the cave walls, Weiss saw no way to climb down the slick surface without professional climbing gear. So really, there was only one way to go down… quickly.

Picking a spot that looked safe, Weiss decided she might as well test where she was aiming for first. Rolling her toy sword in between her hands a few times, hoping this would work, Weiss lifted the sword above her head and threw it like a javelin into the pond below. Straight as an arrow, Weiss's makeshift spear sailed through the air and disappeared under the surface of the black pool of water. And then Weiss waited, counting the seconds.

After a few moments, Weiss thought to herself '_Did my stick get stuck in the soil of the lake… if it did, that spot is definitely not deep enou-"_

But suddenly the stick resurfaced, only ten seconds after Weiss had thrown the staff, floating lazily sideways on the surface of the water. _Damnit… I mean, I guess that's a good thing, but… ah hell, no reason to put it off now I guess!_

Trying to not think about what she was doing, Weiss pulled off most of her clothes and stuffed them into her backpack, leaving herself in only her underwear again. _I don't like how often this is happening_ Weiss joked to herself nervously, hefting her backpack over her shoulder and feeling its weight.

Mumbling to herself "lets hope this works…" Weiss practiced swinging the pack back and forth, guessing how she should let go of it to have it land on the closest shoreline, away from the lake to keep her clothes dry. Rocking back and forth with the motion, Weiss swung the backpack as fast as she could, letting go of it at what she hoped would send it sailing to the shore. For a moment, it looked as though it would make it, but a half second later the bag landed on the pebble shore, and bounced once before landing with a solid thud safe and dry on the edge of the subterranean lake.

_Alright, I've got to go get it now._

Taking a few steps back from the jumping point, hoping up and down on the balls of her feet nervously for a second, Weiss steeled herself and ran towards the cliff before she had the chance to chicken out. Even as she ran, her nerves still yelled at her to stop. But while her nerves screamed at her no, a moronic, crooked grin split across Weiss's face. _I can't even remember the last time I did something this stupid!_

Weiss felt herself enter the air a second later, and now that she was at the point of no return, Weiss actually felt excited as she fell. Dropping like a stone next to the waterfall, looking down at the foaming waters below her, Weiss actually gave out a single screaming laugh of excitement as she fell.

Only a few seconds after she jumped off the cliff edge, Weiss landed in the lake below. Crashing through the surface of the lake, Weiss plunged down into the water, and as she sunk down Weiss heard her ears squeak at the sudden change in pressure. Looking up through the water Weiss swam towards the spots of light on the lakes surface, the swirling waters from the waterfall pushing her upwards faster. After a few seconds, Weiss broke through the surface and found herself floating on top of the lake, letting go of her held breath. For a few seconds she just floated their quietly, listening to the thunder of the waterfall, feeling stray droplets land heavily on the top of her head.

And when the gravity of the situation finally made it to her, Weiss started laughing manically, hearing the high-pitched peal ring off the cave walls. Sighing to herself, Weiss complained "why can't I do that again…"

* * *

Finding the shore of the lake and walking out of the water, Weiss smiled while she thought about accomplishing something so stupid. "I guess that went well" the blonde mused to herself while wringing out her hair and trying to shake the water out of her ears.

Talking to herself, letting herself bask in the pride of her success, Weiss muttered "I don't think I would have been able to do something like that if… if Ruby was hear." Instead of freezing up though like she usually did, Weiss laughed to herself "Ruby probably would have spent a solid week making a rope out of the moss in the cave, and even then made a few spares to be safe."

Finding her pack on the shoreline and pulling on her clothes, Weiss began to feel her adrenaline seeping away. Still, it was hard to get rid of her smile, and while she walked over fully dressed to her old stick Weiss couldn't shake her feeling of euphoria. Weiss was closer to wherever she was going, that was certain.

As she leaned down to pick up her toy sword, which had washed ashore in a patch of light on the edge of the lake, Weiss saw a shadow pass overhead as the light she was standing in changed shape for a second. Picking up her spear and her neck snapping up, looking at the ceiling of the cave, Weiss saw another shadow pass over the gap and blocking the light from the sun for a second.

_Probably just some birds or an animal passing over my head_ Weiss thought to herself. Still smiling, Weiss looked back down the cave walls, checking the different paths she was going to take, seeing if any took her fancy.

What she saw whipped the smile off of her face instantly.

Directly in front of her, seeming to blend in with the shadows, a mass of black fur seemed to be rusting against the already liquid black background. Both black and grey, the shape seemed to be lumbering out of one of the larger tunnels, large white claws clicking against the floor. Weiss stared frozen in horror as she saw, for the first time in almost ten years… a Grimm.

It was obvious the Grimm was old, centuries old, older than maybe even parts of this mountain. Weiss had heard stories of Grimm that had turned grey with age, who had evaded hunters and huntresses for centuries. As the beowolf lumbered out into the cave and stopped by the edge of the lake, lapping up water with a forked black tongue, Weiss stood frozen in fear, not sure if the beast was uninterested in killing her, or simply unaware of her presence.

Standing totally still, almost shaking out of her clothes in sheer terror, Weiss's thought's screamed at the beast '_Please be blind! Please be blind! Please be blind! Please be blind, deaf, dumb, everything that would make it so that I live!'_

Almost as though it heard her thoughts, the creature's eyes snapped up, and through its bone mask red eyes stared down the pure white figure standing in front of it.

Weiss couldn't do anything, and for those few seconds where the two starred each other down, Weiss just swallowed loudly and wondered in her head '_how did one of you even-'_

Cut off though, unable to finish her though, a sudden, ear-splitting roar came from the beowolf in front of her. Weiss didn't take a second to see what that meant. Weiss had fought hundreds of grimms during her years of training along her partners. She knew what that call mean.

It wanted her in pieces. Weiss knew was going to die unless she escaped.

Back peddling, nearly tripping over her own two feet, Weiss turned and ran as fast as she could away from the beast. She heard the Grimm's great roar as it chased her down, gaining speed on her faster than she was creating distance between them. Without even checking to see if it went anywhere, Weiss threw herself head first into a small crack in the wall, the closest and only place to hide. Barely squeezing through, Weiss stumbled back against a wall; one about ten feet back from where she entered the cave.

For a few seconds it was silent, and Weiss strained to hear anything over the sound of her own heart pounding in her chest. She could barely see in her small crack in the wall, and feeling around, she didn't feel any way out. It felt as though there was nothing around, and as Weiss spread her arms out, she started to feel claustrophobic as she realized the space she was in couldn't have been larger than six feet tall and two feet wide. But at least she was safe. Hidden in the perfect darkness while looking out, Weiss didn't see any grimms. It seemed as though the one chasing her had just vanished. Thinking to herself optimistically, she asked herself '_Maybe I hit my head when I landed in the water?'_

But as if to prove her wrong, suddenly a red eye surrounded by white bone appeared in front of her and stared at where she was hidden. Weiss's breath caught in her throat as she looked out at the beowolf, who stared back with what could only be described as insane rage. Giving out a blood curdling roar, the beowolf began to reach into the hole Weiss had backed into, clawing at the heiress, attempting to rip her out and into the open where he could finish her.

Weiss screamed as she backed up as far as she could into hole, pressing her back against the cold stone wall behind her. The beowolf clawed furiously at the caves entrance, leaving inch wide and three-inch deep gouges in the stone where it raked its claws at the walls and floor. Biting at the cave's entrance as well, ripping off great chunks of stone, Weiss watched in horror as it's long arm only missed her by a foot. Clawing at the air in front of her, the beowolf stared Weiss down with a look of pure malice while it continued to try to catch its meal.

Weiss was a rabbit in a burrow, and the beowolf in front of her was a hungry fox. She wasn't going anywhere…

* * *

**So, I'm not really going to talk about the story. I don't have much to say about it other than I like it. What I am going to talk about though, is a certain awesome individual. You all see the new cover page right? An awesome writer on the site named legacy23 drew that. It's awesome! I love it! I saw his pm to me just as I was putting this up, and I had to change the cover and wait, because I just wanted everybody it see it. It's so cool! You guys should go check out his page on fanfiction, and once your done there go from there to his Deviant Art account. He has drawn some really cool things.**

**Thanks for reading, and I'll be back soon. Things are really picking up, huh?**

**Last edited: 11-1-14**


	9. Familiarizing

"Uhhhhhh… this is boring as hell" Mercury complained as he trudged along behind Ruby across the dead grass that covered the mountain path the two were taking.

Ruby ignored his complaining and continued walking. He usually shut up after a few minutes of whining.

Veering in front of the brunette, placing himself in front of her so that she couldn't ignore him, Mercury growled "come on Red, we walk for hours on end, through the boring snow and woods, and you just stare ahead dully as though you're wearing blinders." Shaking his head lightly, Mercury sighed "no way to live Red, no way to live…"

Coughing lightly, using her voice for the first time in a few hours, Ruby ducked under his eagle spread arms and answered back "If I had known you complain this much before I brought you with me, I would have shot you in the knee so that you couldn't follow me around."

"Pfff, you wouldn't… right?" When Ruby didn't answer him and just continued walking along ahead of him, Mercury froze and stared off after the hooded figure in front of him, before calling forward again "you wouldn't right Red?!"

* * *

Over the last two days of traveling together, both Ruby and Mercury had gotten a feel for the other. And Mercury had realized he was going to be pretty much as bored with his new companion as when he had been on his own. Ruby didn't do anything. She didn't say anything. And even when she did, the conversations didn't last long. Ruby just walked forward with her palm wrapped around the strap of her gun, her knuckles white as she gripped the rough cord of leather tightly while she walked along.

"There isn't anybody out here, you don't need to be so high-strung" Mercury hummed while walking behind Ruby, rolling his shoulders to warm up his arms against the blisteringly cold winds of the mountain air. While either one of them would have been overjoyed at the melting of the snow on the side of the mountain that they were walking across, they still had to contend with the frigid mountain winds whipping past them at over thirty miles an hour. Sometimes the winds would be so bad that they would pick up dust and bits of the freshly uncovered soil and fling it into their eyes.

"Yeah, I thought that too a little bit ago… I ended up getting shot, nearly killed, and stuck with you! I think I'm going to stay careful."

"Your call, but that group of bandits was the only other… pack? Nah, group. People don't walk in packs. They were the only other group of people besides myself out here, and now that they're gone I don't really see the point in worrying over anybody else…"

Actually curious for once, Ruby turned around, pulling her rifle of off her shoulder and sating down on a patch of uncovered dirt in one smooth motion, signaling to take a break. Patting the brown earth in front of her, as if telling Mercury where to sit, she asked "so how did you know that they were here then?"

Instead of the spot the redhead had patted in front of her, Mercury sat down directly next to Ruby, who immediately scooted a foot away in response, and answered "I've stayed in these ranges for the last few months. I kept my nose to the ground; anybody who knew what to look for would have just known when they showed up."

"Ooooh, mountain man Mercury, how exciting!" Finished mocking him, Ruby asked nonchalantly "So… why didn't you take care of them then, just get rid of them. They seemed to be pretty dangerous…"

Mercury snapped back sarcastically "gee, wonder where you got that from?" After he got smacked on the back of the head, he grumbled sourly "I just didn't want to deal with them!"

"You still have magic; you would have been _just fine_!"

"So you say! I'm not going to pick a fight when I can just skirt around it, avoiding confrontation and what not!"

"Still though, you saved me." Ruby didn't say it in a kind way, or in a thankful way. She stated it as more of an annoying fact, like how a person eats ten spiders a year while they slept. "Why'd you change your philosophies, Mr. High and Mighty?!"

"You know, you still haven't thanked me for that yet…" Mercury sighed lightly, already knowing that he wasn't going to get a thank you any time soon, especially if he asked. Answering enigmatically he said "I didn't really care for their tactics to be honest…"

Ruby's face scrunched up at that answer, and asked "what do you mean by that?"

"I don't know… It seemed kind of underhanded to sneak up on two women when you outnumber them by a-freaking-lot, and have a dozen attack dogs to boot." Mercury slumped over, putting his elbows on his knees and resting his chin on a fist. "I probably would have helped you guys anyway, but when I saw them sneaking up on you two from afar… well, it was the straw that broke the camel's back."

"You count what you did as saving me?! You left me, shot and bleeding out, to deal with all the bandits. Then you swoop in at the last second and catch that last guy off guard, and you call that a rescue mission?" Ruby flopped down on her back, letting her arms lie out on either side of her body. The ground wasn't hard, but It definitely wasn't as comfortable as lying in the snow would have been. Squirming slightly, trying to find a more comfortable positions while looking up at the sky, the brunette grumbled bitterly from the ground "I wouldn't consider that a successful rescue mission… to me it seems more like you waiting until the real fight's over and swooping in to look like the dashing hero at the end."

Looking at Mercury from her rough patch of soil in the dead grass, she could see the silver-haired villain's shoulders tense up. In a tone that seemed to be too level, mercury asked "how many where there Ruby?"

Smirking, she answered back from the ground "six… myself killing five, I'd say I handled eight-ish percent of the fighting." Raising her foot and patting Mercury on the back with the sole of her shoe, Ruby added in a mocking voice "still, I'm proud of my little Mercky for doing so well."

Sighing heavily, Mercury looked back and snapped "it would be eighty three percent, and I swear to god you call me Mercky again and I'll shiv you!"

Raising her hands off the ground and into the air, Ruby quipped back "whoa, my bad! Mr. Maths over here is going to school me on my arithmetic! Tell me Mr. Calculator, what do you-"

"Eleven."

Annoyed at being cut off, Ruby asked bitterly "what?"

Sneering forward, not looking back at the girl who was still resting her feet on his back, Mercury repeated. "Eleven. There were eleven bandits." Turning around, smiling mockingly at Ruby, he added "and by Mr. Maths calculations, that would put you at a weak forty five percent." Rising smoothly, almost forcing Ruby to flip head over heels as her feet were suddenly lifted into the air as he stood up, he dusted off his black cargo pants while adding slyly "still, I'm proud of my little Rosy for doing so well."

Ruby, who was still lying on the ground and glaring at Mercury through her two legs that were still hanging in the air, snapped back "screw you!" Unfolding herself and rolling of the ground, starting to heal from her wounds and regain some of her former grace, Ruby snatched her rifle off the ground next to her and began stalking off, not waiting for Mercury to follow. He'd catch up eventually.

* * *

After walking for a few more hours in silence, only punctured by Mercury's deep sighs that were obviously only meant to dig at the brunette, Ruby couldn't take it anymore.

"Would you **shut the FUCK UP!?**"

Incredulous, slightly taken aback by the sudden outroar, Mercury answered "I've 'shut the fuck up' for hours. I'm starting to get sick of this Red. I used to talk way more than I've talked since I joined up with you!" Thinking of it as an afterthought, he added sourly "and that was to myself!"

"Gahhhh…" Ruby hissed, making a sound of utter contempt in the back of her throat. "I warned you before you came along that it wouldn't be fun traveling together!" Snorting angrily, the brunette hissed "fine then! I'll think of something to talk about if it really bugs you so much, walking in the nice peace and quiet."

"Um… I don't think that's how a conversation works Red. I guess you're kinda rusty on them, but usually one person just makes an offhand comment, and the other person say somethi-"

"Quiet!"

"Uh… whatever Red."

Ruby stopped for a second, her eyes roving all over Mercury's long, lean body. Ruby thought that if there was a conversation somewhere, it's topic would probably be with Mr. Narcissist. He was decently well muscled, at least more so than anybody else she had seen in a while. If she had to guess, Ruby would probably say it had something to do with still having a semblance. It was easier to stay fit when you were literally overflowing with energy. But what Ruby had wondered about the most came to mind when her eyes rested on Mercury's face.

Ruby's voice became genuinely curious when she asked "so what's the deal with the constant clean shave? I've been with you for… three-ish days, and I haven't even seen five o'clock shadow on you yet. What gives?"

Ruby raised an eyebrow at Mercury, who suddenly looked very sheepish. "Ah… no reason I guess… I just shave in the morning" Mercury answered shiftily, scratching the back of his head, refusing to make eye contact with Ruby.

In a sing-song voice Ruby trilled "every day! Boy, must that get annoying!" Giving him a crooked smile, Ruby fluttered her eyelashes and asked "why?"

"Eh…" was his only response, although he followed afterwards by adding meekly "I just like the look."

Ruby suddenly shot an arm out and stopped Mercury, who thudded into her outstretched arm. Looking over at Mercury, the brunette gave him a wicked smile and sang "Liiiiiiiiar!"

Giving Ruby a withering look, he answered back in a flustered voice that didn't match his face "Red, give it a rest, sheesh!"

A smile broke out across Ruby's face; she had a feeling this would be good. "Spill it!"

"Nah… We can go back to walking in si-"

"SPILL IT!"

"Uhh… well…" Mercury made a few hand gestures as though he was trying to sign to Ruby what he didn't want to say before slumping inward and sighing with a defeated tone "I just can't grow a beard… or any facial hair rea-."

"Ha! Seriously!"

Groaning, Mercury put a hand on his face and simply replied "yep."

"Come on, there has to be more than that!"

"What else is there to say? I get this crappy silvery peach fuzz on my lip at best, so I just shave that off every few days when it starts growing back." Looking over at the brunette, who's limps were mashed together trying to not laugh, Mercury cried out "come on Red, it's not funny!"

That was what did it. That aghast look on Mercury's face while trying to convince Ruby to let the conversation die finally set her off. Keeling over, Ruby actually started laughing, more at Mercury's response than his actual message. Tears started streaming down her face as she tried to get that image out of her mind, of Mercury's crestfallen face pleading with her to stop. Mercury scowled at Ruby, who had actually started snorting how hard she was laughing. Chuckling to herself, Ruby laughed while whipping away tears that immediately came back, mumbling "that's great!"

"Gah…" Mercury growled, punching Ruby in the arm.

Ruby turned aside for a second, stunned, until she looked at Mercury's face and saw his lips split wide in a grin smiling down at her. After a half second moment of hesitation, Ruby smiled lightly and punched him back just as hard, although she may have overdone it a little after he yelped and started massaging his arm where she hit him.

Ruby still didn't like Mercury. She found him worrisome, reckless and dangerous. She had known people with his personality before, and they always drug down every person they ran into before self-destructing themselves. Him surviving this long only meant that the meltdown that finally caught up with him at the end would be extremely cataclysmic.

But there was something magnetic about him too. Something that made her not listen to sense and leave him behind, now that she would be fine on her own. Ruby knew it was stupid, but she found him easy to talk to. Almost as easy as Weiss.

And that just barely made him worth keeping around… for now.

* * *

Walking along, the pair descended down a slope in the mountain that led to a deep ravine between two peeks. Ruby didn't want to admit it, but as she walked along the brunette couldn't help but feel claustrophobic as the majority of the sky was sealed away by the mountains on each side.

Mercury was, for lack of a manlier term, bubbling with excitement as he hopped along next to Ruby. As his more somber partner trudged along next to him, Mercury hummed excitedly "were going to be out of these mountains! One more day or so of this walking, and then we'll be out! Done! Finito!"

"Sure sure, let's hope you're right."

"Sheesh Red, a little enthusiasm! This may have been a week long trek for you, but for me it's been a season long setting! I'm dying to get out of the cold; I can't wait to feel my feet again!"

Ruby rolled her eyes while she listened to the man next to her sing under his breath 'I'm so excited', and was so distracted by Mercury that she barely noticed the giant gouge in the earth in front of them. But she did, fortunately, and Ruby put out an arm to stop Mercury, who would have fallen through the inky black rift in the ground if he hadn't been stopped.

Smacking into Ruby's hand and still almost falling in, Mercury whistled and hummed a thanks to Ruby. Hopping over the gap and turning back to Ruby, he extended a hand and regally joked "malady, if you would ever so kindly give me the honor?"

Ruby upturned her nose to the offer, and hopped over the gap without his help, although her back foot did almost slip into the inky void.

Looking around, seeing dozens of cracks in the ground around them, Ruby asked "what's with the ground here?"

"You never paid attention during you're geography lessons did you Red?"

Rolling her eyes, Ruby sighed "so you don't know either." She knew Mercury had a better understanding of what was going on than she did, although she knew it would be easier to trick the answer out of him than to just ask.

Obviously it worked, because Mercury suddenly responded "this mountain range was once a giant chain of volcanoes. Well, it still is technically, although one hasn't erupted in over a thousand years." Scratching at the ground with the tip of his boot, he mumbled absentmindedly "sometimes air pockets would form and create bubble shaped caves near the surface. We're probably standing on top of one right now."

Ruby's face went white, and suddenly looking down at the ground, back to Mercury, then down at the ground again, and then back up at Mercury, she rushed out "let's continue this conversation when we're not on top of a pit of doom…"

"Relax Red; you see those gouges over there in the stone?" Pointing off a few feet two their right, Mercury's finger leveled at a pair of parallel lines in the ground.

"Yes… and?"

"Old cart marks, back before we had things like trolley systems and airships to get across these mountains. If over glorified wheelbarrows could go from one side of the mountain range to the other carrying over a half ton of materials across this ground, then two travelers who together don't break two fifty will be perfectly fine."

"I'm not risking my life because some idiots with funny hats did it!"

"But come on Ru-" Mercury suddenly cut off, a rebuttal on his tongue. Both Ruby and Mercury's head's snapped off to their right when they heard the sounds of screaming coming towards them. Angry, insane screams just off the beaten path.

Mercury took a step forward and stood defensively in front of Ruby. It was a slight gesture, barely noticeable to anybody who wouldn't have been keyed into that sort of thing. But it didn't slip by the brunette. _You want to take the lead and face whatever is coming our way? Fine by me if you want to be stupid…_

Suddenly, wheeling out from behind a wall, another person burst out in front of them. It- he, the way the person was dressed made it obvious it was a he- stumbled in circles madly for a second as it ran out towards the center of the ravine's path. Whirling around, the man's gaze finally landed on the two hunters, who were watching wearily as the obviously infected man whirled around angrily. Bellowing at the pair in an animal rage, the man began barreling towards the two without thought or planning.

Mercury stepped forward smoothly, and once the man was within range, Mercury easily struck out with his leg and knocked the infected off its feet. The man landed on his back with one of his arms trapped below his torso, and a half second after he landed with a thud Mercury stood on top of the man's stomach with a knee dug into the infected's chest while pinning the creature's other hand with his right leg in a perfect wrestling move.

Kneeling on top of the infected, looking down on the creature's gross, deformed face, Mercury called back quietly to Ruby and mumbled "hey Red, what would you call one of these guys?"

Ruby walked forward next to Mercury , her knife already drawn, and answered absentmindedly "infected. That's what they are…"

"Hmmm…Emerald and I used to call them stalkers. I don't remember which one of us coined the term, it just fit." Mercury twisted his head from side to side, looking down on the thing below him. "Hey Red…" he began, before trailing off.

"What?"

Mercury looked up at Ruby and asked, in a tone that almost seemed as though the question was coming from a child, "is this guy alive?"

Ruby froze for a second, just as she was preparing to bring a knife down into the writhing figure's temple, before really looking at the infected's face for the first time.

It was a grisly sight. He really looked fine, for the most part. His clothes were a little wrinkled, his jeans were ripped, and his shoes looked as though they were ready to fall off of his feet any second. If somebody had looked at just his clothes, he would seem just fine. He looked just like any other survivor, dressed for protection against the winter cold.

But the second a person looked at any uncovered part of his body, that statement would quickly change. His hands were bloody and his fingernails were jagged, the one hand that was only pinned under Mercury's knee at the elbow was still reaching upwards and clawing at the person sitting on the infected chest. And his head was something out of a horror movie. Crisscrossed with ruddy brown lines from dried blood that had poured from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears, his face was rippled and covered with bulges as mushrooms were obviously beginning to sprout under his skin. And on the right side of his face, most horrific of all, little orange half-disk shaped fungi, just like the kind seen growing from rotting tree trunks in the forest covered his face and ripped up the man's stark black hair.

Ruby watched with a disgusted face as the creature still pinned under Mercury snapped up at the silver-haired man sitting on its chest. "I'd give that question a hard 'no' as an answer."

"But why?" Looking back and forth, Mercury commented apathetically "he's not dead yet, at least not biologically." Sneering down now, as if angry at this total stranger for even thinking of getting infected, Mercury's entire persona changed as he suddenly spat "he's still just as weak as we are. His bite won't kill us yet. And he wouldn't survive getting shot in the lungs or spine like a clicker would. He'd die just like one of us." Before Ruby knew what Mercury was doing, she suddenly saw his fist smash into the clean side of the infected's face.

"He could die from blood loss!"

Smash

"He could die from drowning!"

Smash

Ruby saw as he pulled his hand back, getting ready to hit the infected underneath him again, a trail of blood trailed between Mercury's fist and the creature's face, although she couldn't tell where it started from. Trying to grab Mercury's hand, Ruby ordered the silver-haired villain in front of her "Mercury, stop! You're hurting yourself!" But Mercury just shook off the brunette's grip, and brought his fist down again.

"He could burn alive!"

Smash

"He could starve!"

Smash

"**Mercury**!"

For a half second Mercury's eyes flashed up, and over his shoulder he snapped "shut it Red!" Mercury brought his fist down one, two, three more times, before finally spitting down at the monster below him "so why doesn't he count as alive then?"

Ruby stood there silently, unsure of what to say. She had never thought about these people, before they were actual clickers. They were the monsters that had actually killed the most people. "I… I don't know."

Mercury reached back with his bloody hand, on which Ruby could see white bone as his beating had torn the flesh of his knuckles away, and pulled out from his back pocket a small dagger. Shoving its point through the stalkers temple, Mercury's eyes flashed angrily as he saw the light pass from the infected's eyes. Getting up off the corpse, pulling his knife out of the creature's head and wiping it off on the dead grass below the creature, Mercury almost stabbed himself in the side as he shoved his knife into his back pocket again.

Frozen silent, Ruby was surprised when she actually felt concern for Mercury. That quickly faded away when Mercury whirled around and she saw the fire in his eyes. Seeing the look on Mercury's face, it was the first time Ruby was ever actually afraid of her traveling companion.

Pointing at Ruby with his bloody hand, either ignoring or oblivious to the pain, Mercury spat "I don't know what's with you Red! But whatever it is I'm getting sick of it! You know, sometimes you _are actually_ fun to hang around with!"

The brunette started replying, saying "alright, great, but your hand-", but was quickly cut off by a gesture from Mercury.

"_Sometimes_ you're fun! Other times you're a god damn misery!" Mercury sneered at Ruby, spitting angrily at her "I don't know what your problem is, and I don't want to know. I can probably guess from the way you reacted when you woke up." Putting his hands to his sides, he angrily huffed "and I am sorry for whatever happened. Don't get me wrong there. Maybe it was Blake, or your sister, or maybe it was your little girlfriend. Maybe it was even you!" After a second to let that sink in, he added his final statement bitterly. "But I honestly don't care. Get over yourself, because I cannot stand talking to you while your stuck festering over whatever old wounds from the past you're still ripping open!"

Ruby stuttered for a second, saying "I... I'm not-"

"I don't care!" Snapping at the brunette, Mercury began turning away from the brunette while calling over his shoulder "just figure out whatever you need to figure out , or swear to god we'll each go our separate ways after we're out of these mountains. I don't want to be around you if you stay... stay like this!" And with that, Mercury whirled on his heel and stalked off.

And for the first time, Mercury stormed off and Ruby was forced to follow behind in his shadow.

* * *

A few hours later, neither of the two had broken the silence that had started since the afternoon's incident. Sitting silently around a crackling fire, who's cheery light somehow seemed to make the air's mood even more palpably dim, Mercury and Ruby sat silently, wondering who would take first watch.

Mercury sat silently, twisting his hand in the fire's light and admiring his handiwork. Ruby had watched him work, and she would have been lying if she said watching the silver-haired man's semblance hadn't been fascinating. Mercury had just stuck his hand out in front of him, and stared angrily at his hand while a soft silver sheen seemed to encompass his entire forearm. To Ruby, it didn't really look as though he was healing his hand, it looked more like he was pushing back time. As hand slowly healed and the skin over his knuckles stitched back together, even the blood from the infected vanished from his hand.

Sitting cross-legged across the fire, Ruby cleared her throat and said "I'll take first watch."

Mercury just grunted, and flopped onto his back and stared up at the stars, still running his right hand's fingers over the knuckles on his left.

Ruby was going to leave it at that, but something had been chewing at the back of her mind for the past few hours, since the silver haired man's explosion earlier. "Mercury…"

After a heavy sigh, a bored voice drifted over to Ruby, dully asking "yeah...?"

"Thanks." Shifting uncomfortably, not entirely sure what to say, Ruby reiterated. "Thanks…I don't know, thanks for saving me a few days ago I guess."

While she couldn't see his face, the brunette could hear the smile in his voice when Mercury answered "it's not a problem Red. Not a problem at all."

* * *

**So, another chapter, another author's note. Follow, favorite, that sort of thing. Don't really have much to say, although I changed the authors note once because it was way too long.**

**So thanks, and I'll be updating again soon!**

**Last Edited: 11-4-14**


	10. Accusations On Both Sides

_**This was also on chapter one, but if you have the time I would strongly suggest starting from the beginning again with this story. If you haven't read the new description yet, you'll see I had a pretty big change of heart. You don't have to though; I haven't changed too much content wise. I just made the story better; I've become a much better writer since I wrote the beginning of this story a few months ago. Each story went up about five hundred to a thousand words, just adding extra flair and side thoughts, and fixing a lot of grammar errors. But the tone overall does shift slightly. If you do reread this story, you'll see that I'm not changing the theme. It's going to be just as dark as it's always been. But after listening to a friend, I've come to realize that there should be some light at the end to work towards.**_

* * *

The next morning, descending down the mountain slope, the pair were actually in good spirits as they saw the Forever Fall forest on the edge of the horizon. It's iconic pink and purple tree leaves blended in with the horizon of the rising sun, and both Ruby and Mercury took heart knowing that they would hopefully be walking among those trees before the sun set. Walking forward, Ruby and Mercury were happily joking, the conversation flicking back and forth from topic to topic on a total whim. And while from a distance it may have seemed as though they were just lightheartedly commenting on the weather, if someone got close they would realize how tilted the conversation really was.

Stepping under a low hanging branch, not waiting for Ruby to catch up, Mercury continued to walk down hill while calling back "so all I'm saying is… If you have to make the choice, a brick is definitely the best random object to bash someone over the head with."

Ruby pinched her nose, already feeling as though she had won the argument earlier, and replied "no, dumbass. I told you already, a bottle is always the best weapon to use if you're smashing someone's skull in."

"Hmph! Not a chance!" Mercury was scrounging through his pack, which he had swung over his shoulder and onto his stomach, and joked "also, nine times out of ten a bottle breaks before it kills the dude. When have you ever broken a brick while mashing somebody's face in?"

Replying slyly, winking at Mercury mischievously out of the side of her eye, Ruby quipped "nine times out of ten I've found a bottle to work just fine. Seriously, what's with you and bricks."

Sighing with happiness, finally finding what he had been searching for, Mercury plucked a pair of cracked half-moon glasses out of the bottom of his bag. Using his sleeve to polish the glass, the silver-haired villain muttered absentmindedly "I just find it kind of funny to be honest. Have you ever seen the look on somebody's face when you throw a brick at them?"

"Nope. I don't throw things, it never ends well. If you miss, you're now left weaponless with an even more pissed off opponent than before."

Mercury smiled down at the brunette walking next to him and said "I guess, but it's priceless Ruby. It's like the entire apocalypse is put on hold for a second, and I'm sure the only thing the other person can think is '_did you seriously just throw a brick at me?_' The face they make just cracks me up every time."

Ruby rolled her eyes, taking off ahead of Mercury while calling back "your sense of humor sucks!"

Putting a skip in his step to catch up, Mercury called after the hooded figure in front of him, yelling "that means absolutely nothing from you Red!"

* * *

Making their way down the slope of the mountain, where they were almost down at sea level again, had been much easier than working their way up and over the mountain. Unfortunately for Ruby, somebody thought it was so easy that he thought he could multitask. And he refused to believe that he couldn't, even if the day's events said otherwise.

"Mercury, please stop reading your book until we get to a place to stop. I really don't mind taking a break if you want to read for an hour" Ruby whined, getting real tired of watching and hearing Mercury walk into trees. He made the dumbest huff noise every time he ran into an outreaching branch, as if all the air slowly wheezed out of him.

Peering over the cover of his book while continuing to maintain a steady pace, giving Ruby a glare, he snapped back "I've been dying to get out of these mountains, and I want that to happen today. Also, you should read more." Looking back down at the book, flicking over the page with a thumb, Mercury mumbled "seriously, since the world ended how many books have you read? I've got a few in my bag that I could loan to you; keep you from becoming illiterate…"

Ruby sighed while lying "plenty. But that's not the issue I'm having here. What **does** bother me is you constantly running into tree's because you're not watching where you're going. I'm getting tired of hearing you groan every few minutes as you smack headfirst into every other tree."

"I'm fine! Besides, this is a good book, and I'm at the best part!"

Ruby just pinched the bridge of her nose, already feeling a headache coming on from bickering with Mercury. Taking off ahead of the silver-haired man, she called back to him, saying "whatever! Do what you want!" Ruby was only forced to sigh as she suddenly heard a grunt behind her as Mercury slammed head first into the umpteenth tree, one that the brunette had easily weaved around.

Turning away from Mercury, Ruby flexed her fingers, feeling as though something was amiss. Looking at her long slender fingers, left open to the air in her fingerless gloves, Ruby started squeezing and massaging each fingertip. Rubbing her palms together while she walked through the frigid air, Ruby mumbled to herself "that is really weird…"

"What is Red?" Looking over at Ruby, Mercury raised an eyebrow at the brunette when he saw Ruby holding both of her palms against her cheeks. "Um… yeah, I thought I could come up with an interesting way of asking, but I just can't. So I'm just going to ask point-blank... the hell are you up to?"

"You haven't been around that long, but my hands used to get super cold. Too cold, they used to hurt all season long while I was in the snow. Now…well, they feel fine." Ruby stuck her hands out in front of her, flexing them multiple times before muttering "it's not as cold as it was a week ago, but I should still be getting pins and needles…"

"Ah, yeah, that." Mercury looked over the book he was reading while walking along, and his sliver eyes flashed while he quipped lightly "I fixed that when I was working on you."

Ruby's head snapped around, and standing frozen mid stride in the frigid air she stared at Mercury with wide eyes. After a second of silence, where Mercury continued to walk as though he hadn't noticed Ruby stop, she suddenly snap at the happy go luck guy in front of her "the fuck does that mean?"

Mercury closed the book he was reading, _The Third Crusade_, and replied as though he was commenting on the weather "you had a real shitty heart, probably would have keeled over because of a heart attack sooner or later. I may have done a bit of work to fix that… along with the bullet holes."

"Wait, what!? So I was just going to drop dead at some point just because of bad luck?" Ruby, while finding the idea somewhat grim, also saw some irony in the statement as well. It was cryptic, but the idea of struggling on for years only to keel over clutching her chest was a little funny to the brunette.

"Not bad luck, you did that to yourself." Mercury opened his book again, thumbing across a few pages while trying to find his place. Once he found his place he read the first three words on the page before the book was snatched away by Ruby.

"Stop doing that!"

Flabbergasted, Mercury replied back "what?! Reading?! If you've seriously got a problem with me reading, you're going to hell for being an uncultured hillside prick!" He reached for the book, although Ruby immediately pulled it away and held it over her shoulder away from him.

"I don't give a shit about your reading! I'm just sick of you dropping these little tidbits of information here and there, and then walking ahead nonchalantly as though what you're saying means nothing!" Ruby brought the book forward and quickly smacked Mercury on top of the head. Brandishing the book as though she was getting ready to hit him again, Ruby growled "I want to know everything you have found out about… well, about anything you would think I would even remotely be interested in hearing!"

"Come on Red, I just got to the best part!"

"And I guess you'll get to read '_the best part'_ when tell me what the hell you meant by that!"

Sighing heavily, Mercury groaned "meant by what exactly?"

"That heart comment you made! I am in top physical health, in peak…ish condition!"

"My god you're dense…," Mercury groaned, rubbing the top of his head where he was beginning to feel a welt form. "What causes people to have heart attacks Red?"

"Gah, I don't know…. french fries, bacon, fried pancakes… Well, anything from Atlas really…. Anyway, unless I've been eating like a pig unconsciously, I don't see how I'd be having any health issues!"

"None?"

Ruby replied back confidently "not a one!"

Running a hand through his hair slyly, Mercury smiled down at Ruby while quipping "I can think of a few things…"

"Like?"

Mercury put his hand in front of Ruby's face, holding up two fingers. Wiggling the two digits in front of her face, he said "one would be severe stress, and the other would be chronic lack of sleep. Mix those two with not eating well, which I can understand can't be helped, and I see a very unhealthy lifestyle forming."

The brunette stared up at Mercury, whose mouth twitched at the corners. He had Ruby backed into a corner. Realizing that Mercury could be right, Ruby started stuttering while trying to think up excuses. "But… I… Well, it's not that I haven't-"

"Spare me the sob stories Ruby. You know, we weren't designed to sleep seven hours a night for fun; we do that because we need to. Maybe you could get away with it back when you were sitting on the couch at Beacon ten years ago, but not anymore." Looking down at Ruby, in a tone that somehow straddled the line between threatening and concerned, Mercury growled "you don't have to listen to me, but it would be a shame to see you slumped over dead just because you like staying up late and fretting over every little thing."

"Every little thing?! Wha-, Mercury, we close our eyes for twenty minutes and we risk getting eaten! You can't tell me that everybody else isn't as high-strung as I am!"

Mercury sighed heavily, and snapped back "well I guess we're all made of stronger stuff than you! Also, I'd disagree with that last statement! I like to think that I'm a pretty laid back guy!" Seeing Ruby's upper lip curl into a sneer, Mercury cut off the redhead one last time. "You need to learn to let go before your heart literally gives up on living. It's going to pop like a ballon if you keep this up…"

Ruby didn't know how to respond to that, so she just decided she wouldn't. Turning on her heel, she began to stalk away from her traveling companion. A half second after she started walking away, she heard the sound of someone clearing their voice behind her. Looking back, she saw Mercury hold out a hand and curl back his fingers a few times, raising an eyebrow and saying "I'd really like my book back now please."

Ruby's eye twitched for a second, as though she was on the verge of a mental breakdown. The smug know it all look on Mercury's face was the worst part though. Ruby took a step towards Mercury, already knowing that she wasn't just going to hand it back. Ruby, playing a little bit dirty, smacked Mercury on the top of the head with the spine of his book, the quick blow knocking him to the ground. Seeing Mercury flop on his back, she turned away, tossing the book over her shoulder and hearing a solid thunk of what was probably the book connecting with Mercury's head a quarter of a second later. Walking off, calling over her shoulder, Ruby growled angrily, "I am not stressed! And you can take your no good Dr. Fix It attitude and find somebody who actually wants to listen to your lectures!"

Instead of hearing an angry growl curse at her, she heard a laughing voice call after her, saying "Doctor Fix It thinks you've got some wire crossed in your head! If you were thinking clearly you would be able to see that brick is the way to go!" Ruby could only groan as a response as she slowed down. She was still walking away from Mercury, but Ruby was now walking slow enough that he'd catch up sooner rather than later.

* * *

"So, I've been meaning to ask you something…" Mercury muttered absentmindedly, massaging his neck while walking along side Ruby. He still had a red mark across his face from where the book had landed, and Ruby wasn't sure if it was her imagination, or if he actually had the word 'Crusade' stamped backwards across his forehead. Mercury had at least put the book back in his pack, although the silver-haired man had only done that when Ruby threatened him with another head wound if he didn't put it away.

"Oh my god, drop it with the bricks already. I honestly don't care; if its life or death and I have to kill somebody I'm using whatever's nearby, even if it's a freaking potted plant."

Shifting uncomfortably, slowing down slightly, Mercury mumbled "It isn't."

"Uhhhhhhhhhhh… what is it?"

Mercury sighed, and then went "nah… never mind."

Ruby's eyes flashed, and after a moment where she stared up at Mercury, silently fuming, she spat "fucking ask! You've already pissed me off with the whole 'you lead an unhealthy lifestyle, you need to sleep, and do yoga, and deep breathing exercises, and skip off into the sunset while singing Kumbaya and Hakuna Matata' bullshit. I can't see you doing any more damage."

"You obviously don't have that great of an imagination…" Mercury started joking, although he trailed off when he saw the furious look on Ruby's face. Sighing heavily, Mercury groaned while muttering "just don't bite my head off, okay."

"I reserve the right to do so if I decide you're being a moron," Ruby answered back with a raised eyebrow. Ruby started wondering to herself in her head, '_What's with you beating around the bush_?'

Scratching his head, Mercury thought to himself for a second before sighing "that's probably the best deal I'm going to get." Mercury scrunched up his face, bouncing up and down on the soles of his feet while thinking of how to ask the question he had been chewing on in the back of his mind since he had pick up and pieced back together the near death Ruby. Finally Mercury began, first asking "you remember Emerald right?"

"Okay Mercury, I may be forgetful, but I'm not going to forget an arch nemesis!" The corners of Ruby's mouth twitched, and she added mockingly "that's what makes you so memorable."

"Okay, alright! Just making sure!" Making placating gestures with his hands, Mercury went on, saying "that's where all this stuff starts. So, anyway, she had this thing," and suddenly Mercury cut himself off, looking uncomfortable for a second. "She called it this, not me by the way…"

"Oh my god, spit it out Mercury!"

"Alright, alright! Anyway, she had this sorta sense, she called it the… uh… well, she called it the Gay-dar."

Ruby's face scrunched up, taken off guard. "That's… mildly offensive…"

"Her not me! Anyway, this thing was on point man! Never wrong, like ever!" Mercury paused for a second, seeing he was drifting into creepy territory from the look on Ruby's face. "So she told me about you on the night of the dance, back when you were still a first year at Beacon, kept me from hitting on you. She laughed when I said I was going to take a shot… said she was getting red-hot signals from both you, your partner, and like half the room."

"First off… okay." Taking an involuntary step back, more uncomfortable than anything else, Ruby asked "but…uh… what are you getting at Mercury? This is getting a little weird. Am I supposed to be flattered or something? Because I hate to tell you this, but it's not working."

"No, um…damn, how do I… Hell with it, I'll just get to the chase. When I found you I was following behind those bandits who were following you and Weiss."

"Yes…" Ruby responded, bobbing her head wearily, wondering where the hell he was going with this. Ruby was starting to get slight flashbacks of when she wanted to leave Mercury behind, even if she knew she wasn't going to act upon them this time. As bad as he could be at times, she had really warmed up to Mercury. But he was still being a creep, and Ruby honestly didn't know what he was getting on about.

"I heard… well, I heard that argument between you and Weiss… Pretty hard core shouting match…" Mercury rocked back and forth for a second, hands in his pockets while he waited for Ruby to comment. When she didn't, Mercury cut to the chase and just went forward with his question. "What exactly happened between the two of you for you guys to end up in an all out shouting match like that?"

Ruby just shrugged her shoulders, and replied "uh, it was just difference of opinion I guess. I don't know, Weiss and I argue a lot now a days… Why do you care?"

Mercury rubbed his neck uncomfortably, trying to think of a way to just ask what had been chewing at him over the past few days. "I was just wondering… whether you guys were partners, or were you still… uh, _partners-partners…"_

Ruby froze mid step, suddenly catching on to what Mercury had been beating around the bush with. "Oh! ...ah, we are just… just partners." Mercury raised his eyebrows at the brunettes tone; he had never heard Ruby sound crestfallen before. It didn't fit her.

"Seriously?" Mercury's brow furrowed, remembering back to before the world ended. "Because, I distinctly remember the gossip around Vale, maybe a year or two before everything went to shit."

Sighing lightly, Ruby asked. "Mercury, could we not. I would rather...," but she trailed off when she saw that Mercury had no intention of stopping. Bitterly the redhead thought '_so were gonna fucking do this? Great…'_

"I distinctly remember there being a prodigy student with no real connections, well, other than a decently respected uncle and a quirky stepfather, graduating at the top of her class two years ahead of the normal pace, set up to one day be one of the best huntresses ever trained inside of the organization. Everyone thought she'd probably end up taking Ozpin's place as head of the hunter association in ten to fifteen years, once she'd actually received the experience and… it sounds corny, but the wisdom from simply spending time in the field." Pausing for a few seconds for dramatic effect, the Mercury continued on with his story, trying not to make eye contact with Ruby. He was pretty sure she would try to stop him if she could. "And after that part blew over, the entire city started gossiping on how this prodigy had hooked up with her partner, who by sheer coincidence happened to be the heiress to Schnee Dust, one of the most profitable and influential companies in the world." Mercury glanced down for a quarter of a second at Ruby, to see if she was still paying attention. He honestly couldn't tell; the brunette had suddenly acquired a thousand yard stare, and was looking out over the horizon wistfully.

"Apparently they had been trying to keep it quiet for a while, and had actually been successful for over two years. But then a certain loud mouthed monkey blabs to the wrong person when he gets drunk, and then the Schnee in question is dragged in front of her parents. They start asking… well, begging really, for her to say it wasn't true."

She still didn't acknowledge him. Ruby didn't respond to anything he had said, although she did breathe in and out deeply, as if she was trying to clear her head. Mercury took that as a sign to keep going, although really he wasn't entirely positive he should. He wasn't sure if there was a line to be crossed, and if there even was one, where it would be.

"But when she said it was true, and that she was actually, finally happy... well, they werent good parents, because they really tried their damnedest they tried to kill that. I remember her being disowned, losing every dime and possession she owned. Well, it was quite scandalous really. It was big news in all the papers; her parents actually tried to force her to change her name, along with taking every title and birthright she'd ever possessed away." Again, Mercury looked down at Ruby, to see if she had reacted at all. Still nothing, although now it seemed as though something was paining the redhead.

"And the heiress was left with nothing but her school supplies and her crappy dorm room, after her family disowns her because of her life choices, and how she couldn't leave the family an heir as… well, as a lesbian with a lesbian partner, especially a partner who came from nothing. It didn't matter that the girl was going places, only that she hadn't come from the richy riches... well, that and..." Mercury suddenly trailed off while scratching his head, losing his train of thought for a second on a vulgar thought.

Remembering where he left off, he continued on, musing "anyway, sure, if you read her quotes in the paper as if a robot said them it would seem as though Miss Princess was sad enough. But really, anyone with a brain could tell that she was really happy, underneath all the legal disputes and fancy lawyer talk."

Mercury let the last bit, the one part he knew would either get under Ruby's skin or be deflected by the brunette's heart, fall off his tongue sadly. "I know they got engaged, and were planning on getting married in the spring, if they hadn't been shipped out to Atlas to deal with the beginning of the end."

For the first time, Ruby actually responded to Mercury. "Yes Mercury. Yes, yes, fucking yes. I think you remembered all that _just perfectly_. So thank you so much for that trip down memory lane, but what does that have to do with anything?"

"I just want to know what happened? I hated your guts back then, but even I could see you two were happy. How did that change?"

"How the hell do you think it changed?" Bitterly Ruby snapped "the world fell to pieces. That has to change things."

Mercury asked sadly "but how did it make you two of all things go wrong? I wouldn't have bet on it, if I had been given the chance. I never would have."

"Tch! Do you seriously think I'm the same silly girl I was when I got out of Beacon? Do you think Weiss is the same either? Is anyone the same?" Ruby looked Mercury in the eyes, who saw how cold and lifeless the brunette's had become, and mumbled sadly "you're definitely not the same. No one is. The world ending changed us all, and it was more of a scarring than it was a chance to grow."

"But how could you go from being madly in love to what I saw in front of Black Fall a week ago?"

Standing completely still in the quiet forest, which seemed to be hold its breath while waiting for an answer too, Ruby stared at the ground between her feet. The wind's howling had died down, and it was so quiet that the two couldn't even hear the sounds of sounds of the swaying branches that masked each other's breathing. She swayed back and forth for a few seconds, as though she was unsure of how she would answer. But in the end Ruby just mumbled sadly "I'd rather not talk about it…"

Mercury reached out, grabbing Ruby on the shoulder as she tried to walk away again. The second his hand landed on her shoulder, the brunette jerked away. Ruby tried walking away again, shoving her hands into her pockets while she did so, as if she was washing her hands of this whole mess. But Mercury, knowing better than to reach for her again, weaved in front of Ruby and blocked her path. Standing directly in front of her, Mercury just said "I want to know."

Ruby glared up at Mercury, flinging hateful thoughts at the silver-haired menace. But unable to pick one idea to stab at Mercury with, as there were so many hateful things whirling around in Ruby's head, she ended up just grumbling"I do not want to talk about it."

Ruby tried to step around Mercury, but when Ruby tried to walk around Mercury to his right, he stepped in her path again. "I want to know Red. I know literally nothing about you other than your depressing and cryptic, and I would say this seems damn well important enough for me to burn a few bridges on."

Ruby snapped angrily "and why do you want to know, hm? Just for some shitty piece of trivia, some little fast fact about one of your new patients!?"

Mercury answered her in a level voice, saying "I want to know how you could change so much."

"Tch! You _seriously_ think there is some grandiose reason!"

Mercury answered her sadly, saying "I know there must be."

Whirling around on her heel, turning away for a second, only to turn back a second later and shove a finger in Mercury's face, Ruby started shouting "you don't get to judge me! I know I've made mistakes, but they are mistakes that I at least made on my own!"

"What kinds of mistakes?"

Ruby knew she didn't want to tell him. She knew she wanted to keep on burying her mistakes deeper and deeper, until eventually she wouldn't be able to go get them… but she also wanted someone to know too. Not because he would understand, but because he would judge her for what she had done. In her core, so basic to the point of where she couldn't even know it herself, Ruby _did_ want someone to judge her for all she had done over the last five years. She wanted someone to agree about all the things she thought she had become, to point out and confirm all the faults she already blamed herself for.

Ruby's voice came out thick, as if she was choking back emotions, and she started with "I made mistakes! B-but they weren't my fault!" That last part sounded like a lie even to Ruby.

Stumbling over her words, trying to get them out quickly, Ruby shuddered to herself while huffing"I thought, after Yang died, that I had to make the choice to either keep Weiss happy, or keep Weiss alive. I was stupid back then… I still hoped that one day all of this would blow over, sort itself out!" Mimicking her own voice, coming out as a mocking, high-pitched ditzy idiot, Ruby mocked "I thought to myself, 'I'll keep her alive, no matter the damage I do. I can fix it later. No matter the cost'."

Ruby then spat bitterly "the cost was how Weiss thought of me, how she loved me. I used her, my Weiss, to let myself justify becoming a monster. I thought it was… I don't know… _easier_ to live as a heartless killer than as somebody who could both love and protect their loved ones." Ruby sniffed, and in a choked voice added at the end "I knew that Weiss didn't love me the way we did before the world ended. But I thought we could eventually learn to love each other again in a different way. It took me four years to realize that Weiss doesn't just not love me anymore… she fucking hates me now. Because I'm the perfect example of everything that's wrong with the world."

Mercury stood there, stunned in silence. He didn't think the brunette would have opened up to him on that level. And he had absolutely no clue on what to say to something like that. "Maybe… are you sure she-"

"I read her diary pages. Just the ones I found were mean enough." Ruby laughed a cracked, hollow laugh, and added "well, they were brutally honest. I guess people don't say 'the truth hurts' for nothing. It's my fault for peeking where I knew there would be trouble."

"Ruby, maybe she doesn't..." Mercury trailed off when he saw the crestfallen look on Ruby's face.

"She does, and she always will Mercury. I did things that I wouldn't forgive myself for if I was in her shoes. It doesn't matter that I did those things for her... If anything, for Weiss that made them worse. All that matters to her is that I did them." Ruby mashed her lips together, and they became a razor thin line as she looked over Mercury's shoulder at the sky. "We need to get moving if we want to make it to the bottom of the mountain before night falls."

And before Mercury could say anything else, she turned away from him and back to their original path. She walked off, already knowing that nothing had changed by this. Getting her dirty laundry out in the open didn't make her feel any better. It only made her far more sad. Because while Mercury did ask if Weiss could have forgive her, he didn't say that what Ruby had done wasn't wrong. He never came close to saying anything like that.

* * *

Walking along in silence, Ruby trudged along in front while Mercury tailed behind her. The sun was about to disappear behind the peak behind them, and it was as if the ball of fire knew that it had little time to act. Before it was lost for the rest of the day, the sun had really started to beat down on the backs of their necks, as if to remind them of it's season long absence. Both Ruby and Mercury were happy for the heat. It was a welcome change from the normal constant blistering cold winds. And as they walked down the slope, Ruby knew they both noticed when the incline they were walking along plateaued out. A small smile broke out along Ruby's face, and she thought grimly '_well, were out of the mountains at least'_.

_"_So, now that were home free, what's next?" Mercury looked at Ruby out of the side of his eye, wondering if she would ever give over to waterworks. She had laid out some pretty heavy stuff, and he couldn't understand how she could look just fine while they were walking along. Saying that the love of her life had come to hate her would usually leave most people to at least need to wipe their eyes with a tissue. But after a few seconds where her eyes got no wetter than being misty, Ruby had just shook her head and walked on.

Ruby stopped for a second, and looking right and left, she saw the opening to a tunnel off to their right. Ruby cocked a thumb over at the cave, and without waiting for Mercury to stop she walked off towards the entrance. Passing into the shadow of the cave, where the ground was clean and hard, Ruby sat down against the tunnel wall and leaned her head back. Looking up, she guessed that the ceiling was around fifteen feet above them, and the other wall twenty feet away. And looking to her left, back into the depths of the tunnel, the area turned too black for her to be able to see what was hidden.

Standing in the center of the tunnel, not looking to sit down, Mercury muttered "So what, you're taking now to call it a day?"

"Nope, but I just wanted to take a quick break. We've got a few hours before the sun goes down, so I figured we might as well rest here where it's nice before we set off one last time."

Raising an eyebrow at the woman sitting down against the granite wall, he asked "you're up for taking breaks? I thought you would be nearly sprinting for... where ever we're going." Smirking slightly, Mercury added offhandedly "which you have left me totally in the dark on. Care to let me in?"

"Hmmmmm... Well..." Ruby began, running a hand through her hair while she thought. "I'd say we're going to make a B-line for Beacon from here. Closest city, and if there is any place to start looking, that would be it."

"Alright. I'm good with that." Mercury looked up at the ceiling for a moment, and he tried to jump and skim his fingers off the ceiling. He failed miserably, and after a second and third try he sourly asked "you heard anything recent about Beacon? Because I haven't."

"Yeah, apparently it's functioning pretty similar to Caric. If you were rich enough to afford a boat ride, or lucky enough to get on a ship unnoticed, you could make the trip from Caric to Beacon in a few days. Apparently Beacon is still under martial law, although I don't know much past that. I guess we'll find out when we..." Ruby trailed off, the rest of her sentence still hanging on her tongue. Both she and Mercury looked off to her left, into the inky darkness of the cave, as an odd rumbling noise reverberated off the walls. "Do you hear-"

Ruby would have kept talking, but suddenly a figure shot out of the darkness, flying towards them at break neck speeds. She was visible for a quarter of a second before the pure white figure smashed into Mercury, who had been so caught off guard that he didn't even try to step out of her way. There was an audible thud as the two collided, and it was amazing that they didn't both go flying to the floor. Instead they just glance off of each other, and the smaller girl skittered towards Ruby for a second as she was knocked off-balance.

Ruby was on her feet in a flash, because in that quarter of a second, barely any time at all, she saw the face of the person who had slammed into Mercury. But Ruby didn't need to see her face. She didn't need to see the person's snow-white gear. Really it could only be one person.

It could only be Weiss.

Weiss didn't see Ruby getting off the floor, and she didn't register who Mercury was. After a quarter second where she almost fell on her face, her legs found their rhythm again, and before anything had changed she was already past the redhead at her original speed. She kept running, and calling back over her shoulder to Mercury, still unaware of Ruby, she screamed "Run!"

Ruby was already chasing after Weiss, already gaining on the shorter woman. She hadn't even registered what Weiss had said, but with Weiss running away, Ruby would follow. She'd abandon Mercury without a second thought if it meant keeping up with Weiss.

Mercury wasn't as quick thinking though. It had probably been less than two seconds, but as he stumbled around while regaining his balance, he suddenly saw a rustling of inky blackness at the back of the tunnel. His instincts told him to run, but his brain told him it was foolish. They had been gone for so long, one couldn't pop up in the most grand of circumstances. It wasn't until he suddenly heard a blood curdling howl that he realized his error.

A moment later the Beowolf was upon him.

* * *

**Alright, I can tell this is going to be a long author's note. So let's get started.**

**First things first, I wanted to say that I'm not changing the story I had planned. And if you did go back and read the updates, you'll see that I didn't have to change much at all to get the story here. This chapter, which may seem as though it was spurred by my decision to change, has been in the works for a while. And this chapter wasn't changed in the slightest by my decision to make the change to a pairing. The story is still going to be dark, and I'm still following the same road map I have in my head. But a friend on the site convinced me that if I'm going to keep my story so dark, I need something bright and light to move towards. This was a turning point chapter, and I just decided that if there was ever a place to do it, this would be it. **

**Second point! If you aren't going to go back and read the entire story, which I guess I can understand why you wouldn't want to, I would say at least reread the middle to ending of chapter 9. That is probably the only point in the story where I made a change that actually affects where things are going in the story. I don't think I'll ever go back and re-update chapters as drastically as I did again, I already felt a bit conflicted in just doing what I did to the already uploaded stories. **

**Actually, this isn't that long. I've definitely written longer authors notes in the past, although I try to avoid them. Anyway... see you next week or sooner!**


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